AIS Guide&Go offers socially integrated navigation via smart phone

 The application, which had been under design and development for a year, aims to turn online navigation into something that users can also engage in with friends, as well as encourage the wider adoption of location-based service/marketing/advertising.
 AIS Guide&Go is the first social-navigation app for Thais, said Pratthana Leelapanang, acting senior vice president of Digital Product and Service at AIS.
 It will be officially available for downloading from tomorrow, at the “Bangkok International ICT Expo 2012”.
 Initially, it is available only for Android-platform smart phones, but will also be made available for iOS devices in the final quarter of the year.
 AIS has some 4 million smart-phone users, around 50 per cent of whom use Android and iOS devices. Pratthana said the company is targeting 200,000 to 300,000 users downloading the new application within 12 months.
 The app contains 2.2 gigabytes of data mapping that users have to download into their smart phone.
 There is a yearly Bt499 charge upon first choosing an online route, but subsequent navigations can then be undertaken free of charge.
 The app currently has 830,000 points of interest, including AIS business partners’ shops and outlets under the AIS Privilege scheme. The maps have a 1:4,000 scale in cities and towns, and 1:20,000 in rural areas.
 A key feature beyond the provision of a map, route and navigation service is the application’s social plug-in facility, which allows users to check in their location and share the information on Facebook. They can also search for a friend’s check-in location and let the app navigate them to it.
 The application also provides add-on information, especially about marketing campaigns and service promotions.
 The executive said this was the right time to launch an application like Guide&Go that comes with social integration and a location-based service, all on a mobile phone.
 The app is expected to be widely adopted among smart-phone users who like to share their location through Facebook Check-in, he said.
 According to a report, as of last month the number of Facebook users worldwide had hit 900 million, with over 200 million of them in Asia and more than 15 million in Thailand.
 “Thailand is the 16th-largest country in terms of Facebook users, but Bangkok is the biggest city of Facebook users. Thailand is the world’s 13th-largest check-in place, with more than 10 million check-ins per month,” said Pratthana.
 “Mobile searching is eight times bigger than searching on computers. The top stuff on mobile searching is restaurants, followed by beauty, personal and travel,” he added.
 The smart-phone market in Thailand this year is expected to total 5 million units, representing growth of 40 to 50 per cent from last year. The market grew 25 per cent in 2011, and 17 per cent in 2010.
 Smart phones now represent around 13 per cent of the overall mobile-phone market in Thailand.
 The market for maps and navigation on mobile phones is expected to be bigger than that for specific personal navigation devices (PNDs), Pratthana said.
 Thanpanee Chitpukdee, assistant general manager of GIS Soft, the developer of AIS Guide&Go’s maps program, said the market for PNDs in Thailand was about 500,000 units last year.
 “We see a trend that people will use navigation and map services more, but they will increasingly do so on mobile phones. Mobile phones and social integration are the key drivers for increasing use of these services,” she said.
 Her company spent eight years developing the GIS (geographic information system) application for Thai use. It is a partner of Globtech, a leading map service business that provides Nostra Map.