Nokia no offers free Ovi Maps for its smartphones that includes high-end walk and drive navigation at no extra cost, available for download at www.nokia.com/maps.
Nokia bought NAVTEQ is and is involved in all kinds of location-based apps. Google also recently added high-end features to Google Navigation for Android devices using Android 2.0 or later.
The new version of Ovi Maps includes turn-by-turn voice directions for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for
more than 10 countries, as well as detailed maps for more than 180
countries. Included in the free Ovi Maps app are: free events guides; free Lonely Planet guides; and free Michelin guides.
The free apps works on
Nokia X6, Nokia N97 mini, E72, E55, E52, Nokia 6730 classic, Nokia 6710
Navigator, Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic, Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition, Nokia
5230.
This move has the potential to nearly double the size of the current
mobile navigation market.
"The large-scale availability of
free-of-charge mobile phone navigation offerings using high-quality map
data will be a game changer for the navigation industry," said Thilo
Koslowski, Vice President Automotive and Vehicle ICT at Gartner. "Such
offerings will accelerate mass market adoption for navigation solutions
and shift innovation focus to location-based services that go beyond
traditional routing benefits."
According to research firm
Canalys, the number of people worldwide using GPS navigation on their
mobile phones was approximately 27 million at the end of 2009. With
this announcement Nokia potentially grows the size of this installed
user base to about 50 million by enabling smartphone owners, with
compatible devices and devices that will be made compatible shortly to
activate free drive and walk navigationthrough a simple download of the
new Ovi Maps. Nokia will further grow this base as it quickly adds more
smartphones to the compatible devices list. Canalys also estimated in
2009 that the installed base of smartphones with integrated GPS was 163
million units worldwide, of which Nokia accounted for more than half
(51%) having shipped cumulatively 83 million GPS devices.
By removing the added costs for
consumers Nokia expects to fuel the take-up of mobile maps and
navigation providing its ecosystem of partners with clear business
opportunities.