The advent of the iPhone has popularised mobile applications, more commonly known as mobile apps, which can be found in abundance in Apple’s iPhone store or Nokia’s Ovi store. But before Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007 and mobile apps started to catch on, one Malaysian company was already putting mobile apps on the market. 

In 2004, iNavigate Sdn Bhd introduced its mobile application that allowed users to keep track of the traffic situation on major roads in the Klang Valley and the Penang Bridge using their mobile phone.

“Traffic jam is a universal problem but you always blame it on the drivers, or the weather, or blame everything. Of course, we cannot do anything about the weather but there are other things we can do in terms of traffic jam,” iNavigate CEO Lim Kian Khoon said in an interview on Jan 19.

Called m-Traffic, the company’s mobile application shows real-time traffic and weather conditions over GPRS, EDGE and 3G phones using video streaming and multimedia messaging service technology. The images and video are derived from over 70 camera locations around Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Baru.

The mobile application was the product of one year of research. It works on m-Apps, a patented mobile platform which iNavigate developed 18 months after the company began operations in May 2002.

iNavigate became the pioneer seed investee of Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd (Mavcap) and achieved Multimedia Super Corridor status the same year. It also became the first mobile application company to be given a grant by Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC) under the Development Grant Scheme (MGS) in 2003.

“Those were the two initial funding [sources] that helped us in R&D. Of course when Mavcap left, we paid them back their investment plus a bit of the profit. We did not eat up Mavcap money,” says Lim, who worked with major telcos such as Japan's NTT and DDI (now known as KDDI Corp), Hong Kong Telecommunications and Malaysia's Maxis prior to setting up iNavigate.

“All together they [Mavcap] gave us a bucket of RM2 million, but we only drew RM1.3 million and gave back to them their investment plus 20% of the return. The grant given to us by MDeC was between RM1.7 million and RM1.8 million,” he says.

m-Traffic was first introduced to the market through DiGi’s EDGE package in 2004, followed by Maxis’ 3G package in 2005.

Lim says m-Traffic was so successful that it had around 50,000 users after Maxis’ 3G launch.

However, iNavigate could not sustain the success of m-Traffic when the mobile operators discontinued marketing efforts. Lim says new mobile applications or services have to be promoted continuously to sustain growth.

The growth of m-Traffic was also affected when the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) implemented an anti-spamming policy called Mobile Policy Gateway in 2008. The policy required all mobile services to be re-registered and iNavigate went from having 50,000 users to zero.

“So that basically has a serious impact on the effort you spent on the customer before. They [MCMC] did not give enough thought to the impact of what they do upon the industry,” he says.

Nonetheless, iNavigate isn’t just sitting around and wringing its hands. Last November, the company started giving free trials of its flagship mobile application m-Traffic.

The RM10,000 to RM20,000 iNavigate is now spending to promote its flagship mobile application is only a fraction of what Maxis spent to promote m-Traffic when it was part of the telco’s 3G package but the response has been encouraging, says Lim.

He says by end-December last year, some 3,000 to 4,000 users signed up for m-Traffic. iNavigate will launch another free trial during the Chinese New Year period.

m-Traffic aside, the company is looking to tie up with telcos for its surveillance application, m-Eye. It works in the same way as m-Traffic but instead of traffic images and videos, users will be able to view their homes or offices from their mobile phones. Lim says the application allows more than one user to view the image at the same time. The company is targeting local small and medium enterprises for its m-Eye application.

In Guangzhou, China, the m-Eye application is already packaged together with telecommunications operator China Unicom’s broadband package. According to Lim, the package allows users to use the application on the Internet as well as on mobile phones.

“We launched it in December. We hope to see some results maybe this first quarter. They’re rolling it out in the entire Guangdong province,” he says.

Looking at the apps produced by iNavigate, it's clear that iNavigate's focus is on practicality and not fads. “We focus on developing products and services that are unique and is of high utility value to users,” Lim says.

“People ask me why I am not doing all those instant messaging (IM) applications. If I go for IM, before my product is out, companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo would very quickly go and create one.”

So iNavigate has stayed focused on what it does best — focusing on niche segments and continuous R&D.

“We spend quite a lot on R&D, around a few hundred thousand [ringgit]. I would say we still spend nearly 20% to 30% of our income. In our game, it is [all about] continuous R&D, continuous enhancement of the product. Innovation is a game of continuous R&D,” says Lim.




This article appeared in Manager@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 790, Jan 25-31, 2010