PALO ALTO, CA — (Marketwire) — 12/11/12 — Pole Star, pioneer and world leader in indoor location technology, announces the release of Mall Buddy. Available on Android, Mall Buddy is the only application to provide shoppers with indoor-location maps and turn-by-turn directions for 9 of the major shopping malls in the San Francisco Bay area.
Mall Buddy covers the Sunvalley Shopping Center, San Francisco Center, Eastridge Mall, Stonestown Galleria, Valley Fair, Hillsdale Shopping Center, Stanford Shopping Center, Oakridge Mall and The Shops at Tanforan. The application is now available for free for most Android devices on the Google Play store at .
Mall Buddy shows how NAO Campus, Pole Star-s Indoor location technology, turns your mobile apps into an invaluable smart assistant. With Mall Buddy, shopping is fun again! The application is intuitive, easy to use and allows users save precious time.
“Mall Buddy is a showcase for NAO Campus and a clear demonstration of what our technology can offer to large, indoor venue mobile applications,” says Christian Carle, CEO of Pole Star. “Retailers and venue owners strive for real-time, tailored interactions with customers who are often only a few steps away from them. Our technology provides priceless -contextual services- to bring customers into a store. For the first time, retailers and malls can get the right offer to the right customer, at the right time and in the right place.”
Mall Buddy also demonstrates the capability to combine both outdoor and indoor maps to guide users to their favorite shopping location, from wherever they are, and once inside the mall, to provide accurate turn-by-turn directions to their favorite stores and restaurants.
Mall Buddy displays store information, including phone numbers, opening hours and website. When shoppers are close enough, they can check-in and share it with friends on Facebook. The application is also available on the Facebook Appcenter:
With the release of the Mall Buddy application, Pole Star has proven that an accurate Indoor/Outdoor Location solution can be deployed today, in just a few weeks, on a very large scale, including multiple venues and at low cost.
Mall Buddy was deployed using Pole Star-s unique indoor location fusion engine, NAO Campus, which leverages the mall-s existing Wi-Fi infrastructure and smartphone sensors to determine users- exact location. The technology is compatible with 80% of the smartphones on the market (iOS, Android, Windows, RIM…) and may be integrated in existing or future applications.
Indoor maps of the application have been supplied by Micello (), a leading provider of indoor location maps. The collaboration between Pole Star and Micello enables delivery of the best services to users and provides a significant opportunity for development in the near future.
“The market for indoor location services is finally mature, with multi-venue owners, marketing agencies and major telcos, understanding perfectly well the value of hyperlocal and real-time interactions with customers,” adds Christian Carle. “With NAO Campus, Pole Star brings into the real world what has existed for years on line thanks to key words or clicks: advanced behavior marketing analysis, context-aware and targeted messaging. NAO Campus has forever changed the way consumers buy things and how retailers grow their business.”
Pole Star, created in 2002 and based in Europe (France – Toulouse & Paris) and the United States (Palo Alto, California), is the indoor location pioneer and world leader. With over 43 million square feet covered by NAO Campus, Pole Star already has an impressive customer portfolio including airports, malls, and convention centers throughout the world along with an extensive, trusted partner network. The NAO Campus fusion engine combines data from existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, Bluetooth low energy and smartphone motion sensors to determine the most accurate indoor location. Entirely embedded and requiring no data connection, NAO Campus is designed to be deployed on a multi-venue basis. Including a set of software tools allowing partners to implement it independently, NAO Campus is currently the most cost-effective, scalable and Smartphone agnostic (Android, iOS…) indoor location solution.
For more information on the NAO Campus SDK, please visit
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