BRANDING UNBOUND - THE BLOG

GestureTek Puts Future of Mobile Marketing In Motion - Just Ask Telefonica

December 05, 2007 - It's one to watch: GestureTek, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company that enables consumers to interact with interactive displays just by making gestures with their hands - ala Tom Cruise in "Minority Report."

The company's ScreenXtreme, for instance, capures the image of a person walking by and inserts it into a computer-generated scene for a uniquely personalized brand experience - or for placing players right into video games.

Next up: Mobile. GestureTek's new EyeMobile® software extends the functionality to mobile phones, enabling a phone's existing camera to intelligenty recognize and respond to hand and body movement - either for interacting with displays, or for playing games ala Wii.

Over 50 million mobile handsets currently have GestureTek’s technology available to them.

Video gesture control technology, patented by GestureTek, has been licensed by Microsoft, Sony, Hasbro and various mobile game developers for their gaming products.  And games powered by the EyeMobile® Engine have also been showcased in pre-eminent awards programs - including “Best Up and Coming Application”, at the 2006 International Mobile Gaming Awards, and IGN Editors Choice Award for Best Mobile Game, Best Puzzle Game and Most Innovative Design. 

Users of handsets enabled with GestureTek Mobile’s EyeMobile® Engine can now download over 60 gesture-controlled mobile games and other applications.  These deliver the capability to scroll menu items, navigate maps with GPS integration, browse photos and scroll web pages on a full browser window – simply by shaking, rocking or rolling their phone.

“Clearly, we’re on the cusp of a paradigm shift in the mobile world, from button-presses to natural human interfaces,” says Bill Leckonby, Chief Executive Officer, GestureTek Inc., in a statement.

GestureTek says its technology works on any device or surface.  Whether a mobile phone, game console, PC or set-top box, if the device has a built-in camera, GestureTek’s software can deliver groundbreaking “Wii-like” gesture-control. 

The company’s innovative immersive technology even lets users transport themselves into a 3-D virtual world and interact with characters and objects, in real time and with no special gear or equipment.

The potential is so great that Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica has just made a strategic investment to finance business expansion and market growth, and to forge a technology partnership that will allow for further development and commercialization of new gesture-controlled gaming and navigation applications.

We'll definitely keep our eyes peeled for more.

About GestureTek Mobile
GestureTek Mobile is a world leader in gesture-based user interface for mobile devices and the inventor of the patented, award-winning EyeMobile Engine.  EyeMobile Engine is the world’s first software-only solution that uses the existing camera on a cell phone or mobile Internet device to provide people with the ability to interact with their device using gestures. By shaking, rocking or rolling the phone (or making hand motions in front of the phone) users can answer a call, play mobile games, scroll menus, navigate maps, view images and documents, browse the web, enter text messages and do anything else they would normally do on their mobile device, without pressing buttons.  Licensees of GestureTek’s patents or technologies include Sony for the EyeToy, Microsoft for the XBOX 360 and Hasbro for the ION Educational Gaming System.  GestureTek Mobile’s award wins include the 2008 Mobile Innovation Global Award, the LAPTOP Magazine ‘Best of CTIA’ Award and the NATPE++ Award for the Hottest Mobile Application.  Games powered by the EyeMobile Engine have been recognized by the BREW Game Developer Awards, the International Mobile Gaming Awards and the IGN Editors Choice Awards.  GestureTek Mobile developed the first gesture-recognition software to be embedded in NTT DoCoMo phones in Japan and provided the software for the first gesture-controlled mapping application on a cellphone.  EyeMobile supports many handsets on the JAVA, BREW, SYMBIAN, WINDOWS MOBILE and DOJA platforms. Applications are available for over the air download on the Verizon network.  Full developer tools are available on the Qualcomm website.   A catalogue of turnkey games and applications for multiple platforms are available from the GestureTek mobile site. GestureTek Mobile is a business unit of GestureTek Inc., pioneer, patent-holder and world-leader in computer vision control for presentation and entertainment systems.