Free turn-by-turn navigation will be in the hands of Nokia
phone owners under a deal announced by the company.
For some users, this may mean the end of having a separate
satellite navigation device in the car, enabling them to rely
on a mobile handset.
From March, all Nokia phones with GPS capability will come
with a free version of Ovi Maps, including walking and
driving navigation, plus Lonely Planet and Michelin travel
guides already loaded.
And owners of 10 high-end smartphones running the Symbian 5.0
operating system can now download the formerly premium
paid-for service.
Nokia's head of services sales, Nandita Pal, said the move
was aimed at removing the barriers to entry to consumer
market adoption of the navigation functionality.
She said that while tech-savvy users were happy to download
maps to their phones, it was a hurdle for mass-market usage
of the capability.
With maps pre-loaded onto the phones, data costs would be
kept to a minimum and consumers could set phones to off-line
mode to check directions, she said.
Telecommunications analyst Nathan Burley, of Ovum, said the
move was about easing the competition pressure Nokia had been
feeling across all sectors of the handset market.
Burley said Nokia's overall market share had fallen globally,
most noticeably at the market's top end against rival
products such as the iPhone and the Blackberry.
