Internet/Consumer Wireless

The demand for navigation solutions on mobile phones started slowly a number of years ago but has seen considerable momentum in the past year. Current estimates indicate that by 2011, there will be more than 100 million GPS-enabled phones worldwide.

MAPPING TO A SMALLER AND SMALLER DISPLAY

It is a market fraught with challenges, including a very small (and shrinking) device footprint, a small screen and, limited device memory, all on a device with an irregular connection to the Internet. And yet the Internet has set extremely high user expectations for displays and data.

The inherent limitations in mobile phones themselves create significant performance problems, particularly with map file size and map display. For example, a small screen means that images can be displayed only one segment at a time and the image can only scroll a short distance in any direction before a new map image must be transmitted to the device for viewing.

MAP TILING HAS LIMITATIONS

Because of the current limitations of PNG compression, all the image “tiles” must be uploaded before the first image can be displayed. In addition, ‘pan’ and ‘zoom’ functions require multiple map images, further delaying the ‘first image’ display.

UNIQUE ADVANCED COMPRESSION TECHNOLOGY ADDRESSES THESE LIMITATIONS

WindSpring’s patented Data Miniaturization Technology (DMT) miniaturizes large amounts of data and reduces the overall data footprint. The unique Micro Data Format solves this problem, reducing storage and buffer requirements, resulting in faster map display. DMT allows only the relevant image to be sent and allows images to be decoded as soon as the MDF header data is received. In addition, when more MDF data than the screen requires is sent, the screen image can be decoded out of any region in the map.