Whatamap.com, the Finnish custom mobile maps provider, has launched a technology platform targeted towards directory businesses. The platform is called Whatamap Directory Assistance (WhatamapDA), and it is designed to help the directory businesses to enable business on custom maps and provide web-to-mobile tools for maps and other rich content. With the technology the directory businesses can offer consumers context-bound street and custom maps directly to the customers' phones from call centers and web and SMS services.

The main value proposition of the technology is to enable the directory businesses to increase the revenue per customer. Whatamap.com claims consumers are ready to pay for "Rich Map Content", but the problem is on the provider side in enabling and optimizing the content for all different phone models. With WhatamapDA the company promises to provide easy transformation of any map content to several different mobile formats, suitable for the vast majority of phones models (yes, they mention iPhone as well).

Whatamap.com explains WhatamapDA Platform is the basis of all of their products, so this is another way the company is trying to monetize their technology. The service is offered quite typically for a fixed monthly price or fixed price per user.

Our previous coverage on Whatamap.com.

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Jay, September 04, 2008

You had me until "fixed monthly price or fixed price per user." I suppose it would be cool to integrate business listings with mobile maps, but it doesn't seem like a very dramatic step forward.

On the consumer end, it's not much more useful than the address maps people can already get on their PDAs, in fact, text message driving directions from my company, 1-800-FREE411, are pretty much as useful for consumers. The big, defining difference, though, is that our service is free and Whatamap isn't.