Nokia has today announced plans to release a new version of 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.
This move has the potential to nearly double the size of the current mobile navigation market. The new version of Ovi Maps includes high-end car and pedestrian navigation features, such as turn-by-turn voice guidance for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries, as well as detailed maps for more than 180 countries.
“Why have multiple devices that work that work in only one country or region? Put it all together, make it free, make it global and you almost double the potential size of the mobile navigation market ,” explained Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia.
“Nokia is the only company with a mobile navigation service for both drivers and pedestrians that works across the world. Unlike the legacy car navigation manufacturers, we don’t make you buy maps for different countries or regions even if you’re only visiting for a few days. We offer both navigation and maps free of charge, with all the high-end functionality and features that people now expect.”
“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.”
For Nokia, removing the costs associated with navigation for drivers and pedestrians allows the company to quickly activate a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services. This is part of Nokia’s strategy to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services. The move is also in line with Nokia’s vision that the next wave of growth will be centered on the location-aware, social internet — as the ‘where’ people are doing things becomes as important as the ‘what’ they are doing.
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 navigation through 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.
“This is a game changing move. By leveraging our NAVTEQ acquisition, and our context sensitive service offering, we can now put a complete navigation system in the palm of your hand, wherever in the world you are, whenever you need it – and at no extra cost,” continued Anssi Vanjoki. “By adding cameras at no extra cost to our phones we quickly became the biggest camera manufacturer in the world. The aim of the new Ovi Maps is to enable us to do the same for navigation.”
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:
– For operators:
Nokia believes it will enable them to offer their customers a complete car and personal navigation package as well as encourage the take-up of data plans. An additional benefit for operators is that Ovi Maps uses a unique hybrid technology that is optimized for use on a mobile network. By using advanced vector graphics, plus an intelligent combination of pre-loaded and online maps, the new version of Ovi Maps uses a fraction of the bandwidth of the bulky bitmap technology used by most mobile map providers.
– For 3rd party application developers:
Making navigation on a mobile as familiar as sending a text or taking a picture presents a huge opportunity as the customer base for additional location-based applications expands. Via the Ovi for Developers Beta Program, Nokia has given selected developers and publishers a preview of the Ovi APIs and SDK – Beta (software development kit) which will allow them to build such applications. These will then be made available through Ovi Store by Nokia.
Ovi Maps is immediately available for download for 10 Nokia handsets, including the popular Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia E72, with more Nokia smartphones expected to be added in the coming weeks. In the meantime, current owners of Nokia smartphones that are compatible with the new Ovi Maps can download it free of charge from www.nokia.com/maps.
From March 2010, new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost.
List of compatible Nokia devices:
- Nokia N97 mini
- Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
- Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition
- Nokia E52
- Nokia E55
- Nokia E72
- Nokia 5230
- Nokia 6710 Navigator
- Nokia 6730 classic
- Nokia X6
Note: Data transmission charges may apply. Please contact your cellular operator for information about the data transmission charges.
Hi,
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I don’t know who’s copier.
Unfortunately Pakistan is not one of the 180 countries for which ovi maps gives driving directions. I tried to load map for Pakistan with Nokia Map Loader but Pakistan is nowhere.
Looking forward to some useful articles.
but of no use because maps for pakistan is not available. and this service is available for all s60v3 Feature pack 1 and Feature Pack 2. e.g 5320 Xpress Music, N-95, N-78, N-78, N-81, N-81 8gb etc.
Why bother when they didn’t bother to add maps for pakistan?
this is not worth able if pakistan maps not upload
yar GPS working fine in pakistan atleavst sattelite signal reaches good but i am searching pakistan maps becuase map can not show all the places routes and u know about Gprs network in pakistan its bit slow . so an others good news for pakistani users the 3G networking is coming for pakistan in oct 2010 GSM . the benifit fast internet video calling and clearity. so guyz keep it up save Quaid country.
bro Its 2014 Still No 3G hahahahaha….Its Pak…….Here every 1 is Currupt……
What is this ? i have Nokia N95 and its also a GPS compatible mobile. But the compatibility list above is only showing touch screen and E series phones.
Its not fair. but using Nokia Maps, i can see names of places around me.
Kindly tell me k Ovi Maps k liye WiFi ya GPRS ki zaroorat parti hai ya direct hai?
i like this
I wonder where i will find Pakistani maps …………… LOLz
Its rally sad to see Pakistan Map is not included in Ovi maps !
Please do something in this regard –
Nokia seems to be out of smart phone business, I am writing this post from a nokia device, it is probably my last nokia phone.
Nokia is now driving from Microsoft school of thought, seems they do not care about very few pakistani smart phone users.
is it nokia x3 02 compataible for nokia maps