Dial Directions, Proxpro and Microsoft Win People's Choice Awards at the SiRFecosystem Conference

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 17 --  Nokia received the Leadership Award for its strategic commitment to driving the mass market to adopt the more widespread use of location, and Research in Motion received the Pioneer Award for its ground breaking dedication to making location a core element of its product line. Additionally, Summit attendees voted to give the People's Choice Awards to Fast-Pitch presenters, with innovative location enabled applications, Dial Directions for the Consumer category, Proxpro, Inc. for the Enterprise category and Microsoft for the Next-Generation category.

"RIM took an early and proactive stance toward location technology by including and promoting GPS functionality in virtually all its BlackBerry handsets, and for this we have honored their efforts with the Pioneer Award," said Kanwar Chadha, founder of SiRF. "Nokia, with their overall market leadership in the mobile handset industry, is being honored this year with the Leadership Award for driving location to mainstream consumers. By promoting the use of location with Nokia Maps as well as their recent acquisitions of Navteq and Gate5, Nokia is making location an integral part of the mobile phone platform."

The Leadership Award recognizes companies who have demonstrated undisputed leadership in the location industry and have made a major impact in the marketplace, an award won by the GPS Wing of the U.S. Air Force. The Pioneer Award recognizes companies who have created ground breaking technologies, products or services for end-user benefit, an award won by Google Earth last year. New this year, the People's Choice Awards recognize companies for their cutting-edge technology and innovative use cases that promote location as a part of daily life.

Dial Directions, winner of the People's Choice Award for the consumer category, presented their platform for voice-activated mobile services across different devices to power navigation & directions, local search, directory assistance, and other location-based services. The platform enables industry partners to expand their mobile services with a voice-activated interface, letting consumers enter locations (such as addresses, business searches, and points of interest) naturally by speaking rather than typing.

Proxpro, Inc., awarded the People's Choice Award for the enterprise category, presented their product, Prompt, a "push" technology that optimizes navigation and traffic information based on a personal calendar. Prompt compares the user's current location with the time and location of their next appointment, displays the fastest route to avoid current and predicted traffic and tells the user exactly when to leave.

Microsoft, awarded the People's Choice Award for the next-generation technologies category, presented a set of algorithms developed by Microsoft Research that can predict a driver's destination and route as they drive. With Microsoft's prediction algorithms, navigation devices can give location-based alerts, including road warnings and ads, before a driver actually encounters a traffic problem or an advertiser, giving them time to make a decision, even in familiar territory when a driver has not entered their destination.

"Our sincere congratulations go to all the award winners for their outstanding commitment and dedication to using the power of location to transform the mobile world," said Andrew Seybold, founder and president of Andrew Seybold, Inc. "I would also like to thank the wonderful lineup of speakers and panel members at the Summit who inspired and challenged attendees with their viewpoints and expertise, and to invite everyone to meet again at next year's event."

The second annual Location 2.0 Summit attracted more than 200 of the top global location industry executives to one of the world's foremost strategic forums for new LBS innovations. Providing an intimate setting to encourage dialogue among all participants, this year's event was hosted by renowned wireless analyst Andrew Seybold who shared his insights on the most effective LBS strategies that he has championed from the very early days of the industry. After a welcoming address by industry veteran Mohan Gyani and an insightful opening keynote address from Barry West, president of the Xohm business unit of Sprint Nextel, attendees became active participants in the afternoon's three interactive panel discussions. Other keynotes included Christof Hellmis, director of Navigation and Routing Solutions at Nokia and Dr. Vincent Tao, director of the Microsoft Local, Mobile Search and Virtual Earth business unit who discussed trends in the consumer and enterprise markets for location enabled services. Held in question and answer format, the panels tapped into the expertise of the distinguished panel members and explored key aspects of the location ecosystem. The afternoon concluded with closing remarks by Kanwar Chadha, SiRF's founder and VP of marketing, followed by the Location 2.0 Summit Awards reception and program.

Other featured speakers at the second annual Location 2.0 Summit include Masaaki Maeda, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo; Rich Miner, group manager of Mobile Platforms for Google; Steve Glagow, vice president of Orange Partner at Orange-France Telecom; Ed Schmit, associate director of the Enterprise Developer Program at AT&T; Joe Astroth, executive vice president and general manager of Location Services at Autodesk; Magnus Nilsson, CEO of Wayfinder Systems; Niren Hiro, vice president of business development for Admob; Jerry Panagrossi, vice president and general manager of North America for Symbian, Inc.; Randy Frantz, director of Telecommunications and LBS at ESRI; Per Enge, professor at Stanford University and director of the GPS Research Laboratory; Eric White, vice president at Trimble Mobile Solutions; Dean Fledderjohn, general manager at Kyocera Wireless Corp. and Asokan Thiyagarajan, technology evangelist for Motorola. Panel moderators included Brad Smith, technology editor at Wireless Week and Marcus Torchia, Senior Analyst at Yankee Group.

This year's Location 2.0 Summit sponsors are Diamond sponsor Microsoft Windows Embedded, Gold sponsors ESRI and Wayfinder, Bronze sponsors Locr, Motorola, Pacific Datavision, and Samsung, and Media sponsors Berg Insight, Canalys, GPS World and GIS Development.

About SiRF Technology

SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. develops and markets location platforms based on semiconductor and software products that are designed to enable location-awareness utilizing GPS and other location technologies, enhanced by wireless connectivity and multimedia capabilities for high-volume mobile consumer devices and commercial applications. SiRF's technology has been integrated into a wide range of mobile consumer devices such as automobile navigation systems, portable navigation devices (PNDs), mobile phones, mobile computers, GPS-based peripherals and handheld GPS devices, and into commercial applications such as location servers, asset tracking devices and fleet management systems. SiRF markets and sells its products in four target platforms: wireless handheld devices such as mobile phones; automotive electronics systems, including navigation and telematics systems; consumer electronics products such as recreational GPS handhelds, mobile gaming machines, digital cameras and wearable devices; and mobile computing systems, including personal digital assistants, notebook computers, universal mobile personal computers (UMPCs) and mobile internet devices. Founded in 1995, SiRF is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has sales offices, design centers and research facilities around the world. The company trades on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the symbol SIRF. Additional information about SiRF and its location technology solutions can be found at http://www.sirf.com/.
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