Thinking of buying a stand alone personal navigation device? Think twice now that Nokia has bundled its navigation goodies into a number of its handsets.
Until now step by step navigation instructions from Nokia Maps has meant an extra charge. That frustration is set to be left behind as Nokia has put its money, in fact $8 billion of it that it used to buy mapping expert Navteq, where its mouth is, and it will now give walk and drive navigation away for free on key phones.
It may mean that Navteq cannot make much more revenue, but it will put Nokia phones head and shoulders above any others, when it comes to getting about.
In the past it might let you have a map of your journey, but not read your turn by turn instructions, unless you signed up. To us it was a case of the tail wagging the dog, and Nokia trying to make Navteq more profitable, instead of the other way around.
This has led to Google Maps being the standard in most other phones, while Nokia devices were the only ones where you couldn’t get maps properly, which is the opposite effect from what it set out to achieve. The Motorola Droid launched with free navigation features for the US. But Google Maps has nothing like the reach of Navteq, and outside of the US it does not have a Navigation feature (as yet).
It was only a matter of time before handset players began to bundle the full power of GPS and this can be seen as a direct onslaught on companies like TomTom and Garmin.
Nokia says that almost immediately a free download can trigger about 20 million high end and midrange handsets in 74 countries and 46 languages.
Systems like TomTom and Garmin tend to store maps locally so can be used offline, but you can choose to download and keep maps from Nokia, especially on devices which have plenty of flash storage. We know of one customer that uses up several GB of flash just so they have permanent UK maps with no download time.
Get Ovi Maps from www.nokia.com/maps which offers pedestrian and driving instructions, turn-by-turn voice guidance as well as up to date traffic information in 10 countries, and maps for 180 countries.
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 and from March 2010, new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded.