South Korean electronics giant Samsung is planning to launch a social travel review service for its handsets called Tripper.
Tripper is, according to Samsung, a "landmarking" application. It looks to be a serious effort by the manufacturer to get a piece of the mobile travel action at a native handset level rather than just providing another application.
Tripper will be launched in June 2011. It will come embedded in all new phones, and it will be downloadable for all other Samsung Bada phones from the Bada app market.
Features include:
- Enter their points of interests like restaurants, cafés, hotels and any other location.
- Add pictures, ratings and reviews.
- Connect points of interest to create itineraries.
- Share locations, itineraries, photos and reviews with friends on Facebook/Twitter.
- Share with the whole Samsung user community through a central "landmark store".
In the first version, users can find hotels and view/upload reviews and pictures, but there is no live booking functionality.
This initiative from Samsung seems aimed at building user loyalty around the Samsung platform, and at demonstrating some building blocks of its home grown Bada OS, such as location, mapping and social networks integration.
Other phone manufacturers are taking steps in the travel arena. Most recently RIM/Worldmate's with Blackberry Travel and the much rumoured Apple's moves with iTravel + Siri combination.