Foursquare strengthens in Asia
Announcing new and expanded partnerships with Tencent, Samsung, LG, Carousell and more from our growing team in Singapore
As Asia-Pacific technology companies are increasingly looking at international expansion, Foursquare is on a roll, broadening our reach thanks to new and expanded partnerships with industry-leading customers in Asia — and a growing team of experts based out of a new office in Singapore.
There are nearly a dozen partnerships to announce, proving that customers in Asia are using Foursquare’s location intelligence to build contextually aware solutions for AI, AR, O2O commerce, ride-sharing, messaging and more. (Of course, this is in addition to the hundreds of companies that already leverage our enterprise and advertising products around the globe, from Apple and AT&T to Unilever.) Today, Asia is our fastest-growing market outside the U.S.
Foursquare is now the exclusive location partner for WeChat globally outside of China. Consumers who use the app to chat with friends can add a location or tag a Moments post with a place and see address, tips and other venue details. Tencent, WeChat’s $300B parent company, also leverages Foursquare tech in its other social apps QQ and Qzone, where users outside of China use Foursquare to share their location with friends, or choose a location when posting an update.
Other partners in the social networking space in Asia that leverage Foursquare include the global app Path — a check-in app that’s widely popular in Indonesia — and Momo, the Chinese social network. Foursquare is Momo’s sole location provider outside of China; users share their whereabouts with friends as well as app users nearby.
Foursquare’s deep integration with Samsung showcases our ability to enhance new mobile phones. Whenever a person with the Galaxy S8 and S8+ takes a photo, the image is attached to the specific location using Foursquare’s Places database of more than 105M venues around the globe. The phone also serves up contextually relevant locations for those who are searching for a place to eat, drink or explore.
Look out for Foursquare highlighted in Samsung’s latest global commercial.
LG, the South Korean-based company chose Foursquare technology in the phone’s calendar feature; appointment locations are based on the Foursquare database, which also helps users find convenient meeting locations nearby.
Singapore-based Carousell, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing mobile marketplaces, relies on Foursquare location to help buyers and sellers identify nearby places to meet up and exchange goods or payment. Lucas Ngoo, Co-founder & CTO, Carousell says, “At Carousell, we connect people so they can buy and sell pre-loved items. Foursquare and its expertise in location-based services helps us connect our Carousellers more effectively, making it all the more convenient to get the items they always wanted.”
Foursquare’s API powers several influential ride-sharing companies around the globe, from Uber in the U.S. to some of the largest ride-hailing companies in Asia.
Travel Japan WiFi, one of the country’s most downloaded travel apps, helps direct travelers to the best places to eat and drink and find 200,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country. According to Kenji Soma, CTO of Travel Japan WiFi’s parent company Wire and Wireless Co., “It is simple and easy to integrate the Foursquare APIs, which immediately resulted in a highly-scalable product. We are also reassured that nearly every place in the world is in the Foursquare database, so we can deliver top-notch recommendations, always.”
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Introducing Foursquare’s Asia-based team, who offer on-the-ground technical support and local language fluency, and work hand-in-hand with partners as they design location-powered products. We’re proud to introduce:
Jeremy Geiger, Head of Enterprise Business, Asia-Pacific
Jeremy has more than 15 years of experience bringing data-oriented enterprise technology companies into China, Korea, Japan, India, Australia and SE-Asia. Formerly the Founder & CEO at Retailigence, Jeremy uniquely understands the power of mobile, location data and the needs of large Asian enterprise customers.
Allen Wu, Senior Business Development Manager
Allen’s expertise, honed from years at Baidu, Lenovo, Dell and Nokia, expands and deepens our relationships with a rapidly growing number of large international developers, internet companies and hardware companies.
Hyounil Choi, Senior Technical Account Manager
Hyunil has years of experience in technical, product and implementation roles at Korea-based Naver and Japan-based LINE, and played a key role in Germany-based SAP’s expansion in China.
Update 9/27/2017:
As of last month, China’s largest travel company Ctrip now relies on Foursquare to help millions of Chinese travelers find details on international destinations as well as search for nearby recommendations when they’re outside the country.
Additionally, Foursquare continues to also support the next generation of Asian start-ups, such as our latest partner, Beijing-based MxTrip.
These most recent examples illustrate how we’re continuing to expand throughout the Asian market and to support Asian companies, large and small, as they expand internationally — and to help Asian travelers explore the world.
