Zagat Survey offered a glimpse of the future of what is to come on
data-enabled mobile phones when it demonstrated its Zagat.com restaurant guide
application in the Microsoft and Ericsson booths at the CTIA Wireless 2000
convention last week in New Orleans.
Working with Wireless Knowledge, Inc., Zagat developed an interface accessible
to a wide variety of mobile devices including those with Microsoft Mobile
Explorer browsers.
Zagat Survey will soon offer restaurant, hotel and travel content for mobile
devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs and pagers in the belief that such content
represents a killer app on mobile devices. Using Zagat's branded,
distinctly-edited ratings and reviews, consumers and business travelers will be
able to identify restaurants by proximity, ratings and a host of special
features and then make electronic reservations directly from their data-enabled
devices.
"The team at Wireless Knowledge helped make us a big hit at the Conference,"
said Tim Zagat, Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Zagat Survey. "We plan to make
our content available on as many platforms as possible. Wireless Knowledge is
providing us with instrumental support in developing our wireless Internet
application."
"Wireless Knowledge believes business users are going to drive wireless
data penetration, and Zagat.com's restaurant and hotel guides represent the type
of content that mobile business users need," said Greg Richardson, Vice
President, Professional Services for Wireless Knowledge. "Wireless
Knowledge, working with Zagat.com, is going to deliver compelling content across
a variety of wireless devices."
Zagat.com has demonstrated an early commitment to the wireless space by being a
charter content provider to NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest ISP, which has 5 million
I-Mode subscribers. Zagat.com also recently announced a partnership with
Oracle's Portal-to-Go service to offer restaurant reviews to mobile users. Since
then, Zagat.com is presently in discussions with major wireless companies
interested in using its content as a lever to reduce customer acquisition costs;
make the wireless data experience more compelling for the average consumer; and
bring branded services to a new information and transactional platform.
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