INQ, the mobile phone manufacturer head quartered in London and Foursquare ( a location-based social networking website based on software for mobile devices, This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones) have announced their collaboration on this Monday 23rd May 2011. The announcement was made by INQ CEO Mr Frank Meehan.This business development in the field of social media will help the users explore nearby places via Foursquare.
Earlier INQ had worked with Facebook to release ‘FaceBook phone’,released as INQ Cloud touch ,an Andriod Smart phone with rich face book integration .Following this was the collaboration of INQ and four square .Announcement was made that they were working to give a similar home screen experience for INQ’s line up of Andriod devices .
The release will offer OS level Foursquare integration similar to Face book integration on the INQ Facebook phone .This is expected to give users instant access to location sharing and recommendation features.
There was an update from Foursquare on the company blog which said that the users can check in and explore without even firing up the application. The press materials from INQ regarding the future release stated that users will be able to swipe back and forth between Facebook and Foursquare home screens and this dependant on what they are doing,what they are looking for and who they want to connect with .
After this release we will have a lineup of highly socialized INQ handsets that will host Facebook/Foursquare pages .Competition will be there among these two social networking sites for user attention on these INQ devices. Facebook/Foursquare will have their own targeted number of users ,say one may be looking for one billion users and other ten million ;but in the eyes of mobile manufacturer the social networking sites battling with each other, have got equal preference. Exception in this case will be that INQ has chosen Foursquare, not Facebook to power its phones’ location services.
Considering the decision of INQ, it is well known that phone maker’s devices have limited carrier support and they are not yet available in the United States of America. As of now INQ has its offices in Rome, San Francisco, Beijing and Hong Kong, Toronto, Seattle, Singapore and Delhi. Foursquare cannot expect an improvement in their position in the social networking hierarchy because of this collaboration, as INQ will do little regarding this
