MOVI: The navigation and directory app from Yellow Pages that connects you instantly to businesses in the Philippines

Manila, Philippines—Who doesn’t remember the Yellow Pages fondly? Everyone has memories of looking up a little-known hardware shop because dad needed tools or mom asked for the number of the neighborhood plumber. For 57 years, the Yellow Pages have been a reliable institution, printing annual editions of the ubiquitous yellow papered digests that sat solidly beside many home and office landline phones.

But the digital age demanded that the Yellow Pages evolve along with it. Thus, Yellow Pages online, the YP mobile and YP app were born, still answering that demand to provide reliable and accurate business information to anyone who might need it. And in their dedication to better service the Filipino people, they launched their most innovative product yet, the MOVI app.

MOVI is a free offline GPS turn-by-turn navigation and local search system. It enables users to navigate through the streets and localities all over the Philippines even without internet connection. What truly sets it apart is that it boasts itself of business information the Yellow Pages have been known for decades – as a source of legitimate establishments. It gives users accurate and exact directions to the business they want to go to and provides various routes they can take to get there before even beginning the journey. And it makes it easier for users to find establishments in the map with specially-marked point-of-interest icons such as restaurants, hotels, gasoline stations, hospital and even the nearest pay parking to name a few.

Doji Lopez, Vice President for New Media and Product Development at Directories Philippines Corporation (DPC), recalls a trip abroad in the late `00s. “All the cars had navigation devices or GPS which eventually evolved to finding establishments along your route that you might find interesting. The eureka moment for us was that the Yellow Pages should also be on mobile and have that element of navigation,” he recalls.

Lopez worked closely with DPC’s President, Ricardo Bautista, in quickly developing the app and Bautista was confident in the product. “94-96% of the people who look at the Yellow Pages would actually call or visit the establishment they were looking up with 54% acquiring the product or service they inquired about within the hour. We had this habit that people developed for the 57 years that DPC has been in operation. It’s this habit that made us successful, a habit that created ready users. We knew that by combining the new technology with our database, MOVI was a great idea. What other medium can boast of that many ready buyers?” he asks.

Bautista says that since the Yellow Pages has always had a strict filter to provide accurate information, the maps and the business listings are as exact and correct as they can possibly be, taking the effort to geomap each location. Best of all, the app is absolutely free to download on any smartphone.

What sets MOVI even further apart is the maps have very clear and clean images, unlike other navigation apps that might prove a distraction or an accident waiting to happen while driving. “But really it was all about taking the granularity of content up several notches. We took the time to integrate the Philippine map, our Yellow pages, the technology. Overall it took nine months to develop and we are proud of the result,” Lopez says.

Bautista agrees. “It’s all about focusing on our core. We have ready users and we have businesses, we just want to bring them to each other in the fastest and most convenient way. I believe with MOVI we have done exactly that,” he says.

Yellow Pages worked closely with NDrive, an independent developer and provider of state of the art turn-by-turn navigation software for smartphones and personal navigation devices and is a worldwide leading innovator.  NDrive’s software is based on on-board map data, providing a network independent user experience, and connects to the Cloud for a wide range of location based services, including map updates. With this Portuguese software-house with millions of users worldwide and 15 years’ experience on navigation solutions development is combined with Yellow Pages specialization of local search, great things can be expected.

MOVI is now available for download on iOS and Android phones. For more information, visit www.movi.ph.