Mobilepeople to Power Trader Corp.’s Mobile Apps

Copenhagen-based mobilepeople has been making moves throughout North America over the past year, starting with its deal to power the DexKnows suite of mobile products for directory publisher R.H. Donnelley.

Its latest deal, announced today, is to power the mobile apps for Canada’s Trader Corp. Trader is the top publisher of classifieds advertising in Canada, known best for its AutoTrader property. It also has 160 publications and 20 Web sites — a rich base of content on which to build mobile local apps in different verticals.

In the near term, it looks like mobilepeople will start with AutoTrader and include iPhone, BlackBerry and mobile Web versions. From the release:

As more people embrace mobile as a primary source of information while on the go, with 4.3B worldwide users, mobile presents a natural touch point for AutoTrader to meaningfully engage with customers. AutoTrader is addressing this expanding trend in mobile use by tapping mobilepeople to develop native search applications that will allow users to find vehicles and dealers that meet their specific search criteria.

More specifically, mobilepeople has a forward looking philosophy behind its mobile technology that expands the traditional local search model to include discovery components. This moves beyond the “what” and “where” boxes that represent the first generation of mobile local products inherited directly from the desktop.

The idea is that mobile local product evolutions should better capitalize on the unique aspects of the hardware: It’s portable, location aware and users don’t want to do a lot of finger tapping. All this points to discovery aspects of mobile products that are beginning to come out through the work of mobilepeople and others we’ve profiled.

Expect to see this trend continue and to see more deals formed by mobilepeople in the coming months. In the meantime, buy your ticket to L.A. to join us for the Interactive Local Media conference next month. Mobilepeople VP and GM Jeff Porter will join us on stage to talk about these market developments and what the future could hold.

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Related: Our mobilepeople report has more (sub. req.).