MOSCOW, March 18, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yandex (Nasdaq:YNDX) has purchased Israeli startup KitLocate, the developer of an energy-efficient geolocation technology for mobile devices. The KitLocate team has now fully joined the staff of Yandex.
KitLocate's technology can be applied in mobile applications for which data on a user's movements are essential, in order to offer services at the right location and at the right time. It is based on statistical analysis and allows location-based apps to less frequently request the device's geographic coordinates via GPS or GLONASS – a battery-consuming process.
KitLocate is already well known in a number of markets and is used in applications to find parking spaces, for example, and in the payment services such as IsraCard. Yandex will distribute the technology on the international market and also use KitLocate to improve its own services, including in the personalisation of mobile search and targeted advertising.
Yandex has long been working with startups and looking for talented teams around the world. In the past few years the company has acquired and invested in about a dozen startups, including in Israel. In 2010, Yandex became a shareholder in Israeli company Face.com, which is developing facial recognition technology. Facebook has since purchased Yandex's stake in Face.com and uses the technology in its social network.
KitLocate was founded in Israel in 2012. It won the Israel Advanced Technology Industries (IATI) & MasterCard Israel Technology Award 2012 and subsequently raised seed funding. KitLocate's customers include both large companies and startups.