In December last year Waze, the social traffic and navigation app for smartphones, raised a hefty $25 million Series B round of funding. With growth doubling from 2 million users worldwide in December last year to four million users in 45 countries now, Waze clearly knew it was on a roll. And today it launches its app in the UK [iTunes link]. (Indeed, I’ll be interviewing Waze’s VP Community Geographer Di-Ann Eisnor tonight in London at this event.
To kick off the UK launch Waze CEO Noam Bardin struck a deal with Denver-based Intermap in February to provide users with a base road grid across Britain on which they can play. Intermap has re-mapped entire countries and built uniform national databases for Europe – so expect plenty more European country roll-outs from Waze based on this data (France and Italy are already live).
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