Japanese NAVITIME launches satnav service in APAC

NAVITIME,a Japanese mobile in-car and pedestrian navigation provider is launching its services in Australia,Singapore and Malaysia. Together with the U.S. and European areas,NAVITIME is now available in twenty three countries worldwide. The service will be provided as a 4 weeks subscription costing $4.99 for Australia and $4.99 for Singapore and Malaysia combined. A free four-week trial is also available.

NAVITIME’s multimodal system gives the fastest and most practical travel route using a combination of walking,driving,and public transportation. In the Asia Pacific region subway routes are available for the cities of Sydney and Singapore and local train routes for Sydney,Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

NAVITIME application now supports total of forty three devices,recently adding NOKIA 5800 Xpress Music and BlackBerry 8900 (Curve) and other Symbian,Blackberry and Windows Mobile Smartphones.

NAVITIME initially launched its service in 1998 in Japan where the company currently has over 2 million monthly subscribers. The global expansion started last year in the United States and more recently in Europe. But to date the company is crucially lacking partnerships with wireless operators and handset manufacturers outside of Japan.