Waze Debuts New International Partnership Program

The worldwide popular provider of community-based live maps and real-time road information waze announced today the launch of a new partnership program around the world, aimed at local map providers. According to the company, the launch of the new program is based on the successful international launch of its service and on the traction it has seen all around the world.

The new partnership with local map providers globally is aimed at enabling the transformation of static maps into live ones. According to the company, there are a wide range of map providers around the world that have valuable map data, yet which face strong competition from global players, and that are also threatened by commoditization of map data and by the increase in maintenance cost related to their services.

The new partnership program announced by waze is meant to be beneficial both for the company and for the local map providers. According to waze, the maps from the provider will be turned into a real-time, navigable asset (from the static and costly-to-update resource they are now), while also enabling reduction in operational costs. Moreover, the waze user community will also benefit from the maps, while partners will be able to expand their maps to include real-time traffic, community updates and reports.

“The navigation market is developing rapidly with the proliferation of GPS-enabled smartphones,” says Noam Bardin, waze’s CEO. “At the same time, user expectations from maps are growing, while revenue-per-user falls as the industry migrates to advertising supported business models. We’re interested in facilitating our partner’s access to the next generation of maps via the most efficient means possible: our real-time map building and live crowdsourcing technology.”

According to waze, some partnerships are expected to be formed in South America and the Far East, and the company might be able to announce the first deals in January 2010. “Crowd-sourced maps have dramatically shortened the months-long update cycles of map industry giants, and waze has taken this concept one step further; to an even faster rate of map building and updating. Instead of relying on users who edit the map from their home computers, waze empowers anyone to build maps within a game-like environment, passively, as they drive around with the company’s free navigation app open on their smartphone,” the company also notes.