Nokia Makes Walk And Drive Navigation Free On Its Smartphones, Doubling Size Of Mobile Navigation Market

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. 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.

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 onthe location-aware, social internet.

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 having shipped cumulatively 83 million GPS devices.

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.

For more information please visit
www.nokia.com