Intel picks up location-based services firm Telmap
Intel has bought the Israeli location-based service and navigation company Telmap, so it can offer Telmap's technology to AppUp developers.
The chip giant, which has several facilities in Israel, announced the acquisition on Wednesday at the AppUp Elements 2011 conference. In a blog post, AppUp general manager Peter Biddle said Telmap would become a wholly-owned Intel subsidiary, once the deal closes.
"This move is a step towards expanding our mobile software services capabilities as Intel continues to grow in the area of software and services," Biddle wrote. "We are all very excited to have such knowledgeable and respected experts join the company."
Telmap sells white-label navigation, mapping and location-based services (LBS) products to operators, so those carriers can give their customers alternatives to the likes of Google Maps.
AppUp Center, meanwhile, is an online app store that Intel has set up in an attempt to draw developers to its relatively mobile-friendly Atom processors.
In his post, Biddle explained that Intel wanted to help grow Telmap's existing mobile local search, mapping and navigation businesses, but that it also wanted to use Telmap to "directly provide developers with location-based services spanning devices, operating systems and CPU architectures".
"Telmap will allow us to provide AppUp developers with great, differentiated location capabilities in the form of a standard set of location-based APIs and software that developers can easily integrate into their AppUp apps," Biddle wrote, promising developers "new advanced capabilities with just a few lines of code".
Also at the AppUp conference, Intel addressed the ditching of MeeGo for Tizen, a new Linux-based OS that will pull together bits of MeeGo and the LiMo mobile platform. According to a separate blog post, existing MeeGo netbook apps will continue to run on Tizen netbooks.
AppUp will serve as "a store front for multiple Tizen device implementations", the post added, explaining that the AppUp developer programme would provide "application labs, accelerator funding, developer challenges, and community engagement, to help drive development and app innovation for the Tizen platform".