In almost every trip overseas there is a moment when you are completely confused. Do the restaurants open on a Monday here? Are the police tough on speeding? Why are the train stations named after places that are not on the map? But if you forget to buy the obligatory ‘Lonely Planet’ guide at the airport, you stay that way ‘ confused.
Which is why we think the Nokia deal to make each of the books downloadable to a handset, is one of those marketing masterstrokes that really makes a difference. Nokia said yesterday that the Lonely Planet content will be available on Nokia Maps.
Last year Nokia spent over $8 billion buying Navteq, a move designed to take it head on up against Google Maps. Of course any Nokia handset that offers access directly to the mobile web could be used to look at the Google search page, but what Nokia has done is offer data on 40 countries in local Nokia search ‘ so if you want a global search use Google, if you want something nearby ‘ like a restaurant ‘ it drops down to Nokia Search. Now it will go a step further and integrate the 500 books, downloadable one at a time over the air or from a PC, to go with the 200 countries covered by Nokia Maps.
What Nokia has understood is that telling you where a restaurant is, doesn’t tell what the food’s like, or the fact that the waiters get up and take a turn as the entertainment or whether or not they tip in that country an despite only employing 360 writers, everyone finds at some stage that local colour is not the same as a local directory. Nokia has already integrated 100 destinations with Nokia Maps with more to come, costing €7.99 (£6.30).
We doubt that Lonely Planet is the only such resource, though it is generally held to be the best, and we also doubt that it has an exclusive with Nokia. But making travelling more comfortable is an ideal application for a mobile device. The next step should be a downloadable phrasebook – translator which you speak into which does your speaking for you. Don’t say it won’t happen, the processing power on handsets is doubling almost every year ‘ and soon it will be a natural, besides someone had a shot at that application on the Sony PlayStation Portable and though it has never emerged as a product, it’s day will come.