Michal Marek The Finnish Nokia sent a very pleasant message to the world. It comes with a new ambitious map application called HERE and in the following weeks he wants to publish its official version for iOS.
Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia, said:
People want great maps. Thanks to HERE, we are able to bring our own map and navigation service that will enable people to get to know, discover and share their world better. With HERE, we can also show customers of all mobile platforms our twenty years of experience in this field. We believe that as many people as possible will benefit from our efforts.
In connection with its expansion in this business sector, Nokia will also offer an application for iOS. This application will be built using HTML5 and will offer many great features. Offline use, voice navigation, navigation along walking routes and displaying the current traffic status will be a matter of course for HERE. An overview of public transport routes will also be available. The application will be offered as a free download from the App Store and customers will receive it within a few weeks.
Nokia is also planning to expand to Android and the emerging operating system from Mozilla called Firefox OS. The Finns are probably really serious about their maps, because they decided to acquire the Californian company Berkeley, which is supposed to help them with the creation of 3D maps and the new LiveSight 3D service.
The dissemination of new maps to the general public is a key aspect for Nokia for further development. The more people actively use HERE maps, the better these maps can be. An important part of a modern map application is the "social" part. Up-to-date traffic information or objective reviews of restaurants and clubs can only be achieved with a broad user base. So let's hope that HERE from Nokia will be really worth it and maybe even push the development of new maps from Apple. The native map application included in iOS 6 still does not reach the qualities that users from all over the world crave and were used to in previous versions of iOS.
so that's terrible. nokia has a lot of respect for me and I'm looking forward to its maps because I once had a touch nokia with symbian and it had really perfect maps, if not the best I've ever seen, so I'm 100% looking forward to these. during the article I mainly thought about the price for which I would be willing to buy them and I also thought about how much it could earn them, and then when I read that they will be free, I almost fell :) Samsung, because you can see that they are really trying, and if I didn't have a Mac, I would definitely go for Windows Phone 8, along with desktop 8s, which don't seem to be bad.
I had a sony vaio duo with w8 in my hands today and I was totally blown away by the device. Perfect display, the system ran like lightning, the unfolding... great arrangement.
Yes, it's very ambitious... I wonder if Apple will let it into the AppStore ;)
so this is the nail in the coffin for Nokia... offline maps were the only reason people bought those phones. Now nokia has nothing to force their customers to buy it…
Well, I'm interested in how I want to make money on free maps, but if they license all the maps to the last producers for wp, then some baliks will start to worry about it. Someday we need to see a Nokia that will not just sell devices, but will be dedicated to communication and geolocation technologies.