Nokia Bets Big On Mapping

angry tapir writes "Nokia and Oracle have joined forces on mapping, with details of the deal to be announced at the Oracle OpenWorld conference. To differentiate its smartphones from the competition, Nokia is betting big on location as well as imaging technology. Oracle is expected to add Nokia's mapping technology to its applications. Part of Nokia's location strategy is signing deals for the use of its Navteq mapping technology with as many companies as possible. Besides the deal with Oracle, Nokia has recently announced contracts with car makers BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Korean Hyundai, which will all use Navteq map data in some of their vehicles. Garmin will also start using Nokia data on transit services and walking routes to power a new Urban Guidance feature, which will be available as part of its Navigon app for Android and iOS. Nokia's most important partner on navigation, though, is Microsoft. All smartphones based on Windows Phone 8 will have Nokia's Drive application as standard, while Microsoft's Bing Maps geographical search engine uses Nokia data."

Re:Makes sense

[mrjb]

Unless I'm gravely mistaken, they've got some excellent talkers working there. I don't see the business case, but apparently someone managed to convince the management enough for this to make the news. Nokia aren't not exactly first to market, so they better get it right. Because they've got some fantastic competitors in Tom Tom, OpenStreetMaps, Google and yes, even Apple. Unless they "Get it right" and come up with a bloody good reason for people to switch from their cost-free-and-good Android Google Maps, they're just throwing money into a bottomless pit.

As I understand it...

[Kupfernigk]

Nobody but Samsung really makes money out of Android. The bar for making a phone which is competitive in the market is now almost incredibly high. You are up against two huge companies with vast resources, one of whom admittedly only wants to occupy the top and middle ground, but the other makes a lot of cheap phones as well. Arguably Samsung overlaps Apple at the top end as well with the Note 2.

There really isn't any room for me-too products. RIM is trying to make the perfect business portable communications device - and I hope they succeed - and Nokia is trying to make a stand-out product for people who travel light: good mapping, good cameras, and an OS which isn't iOS, for when iOS becomes meh with the youth market. I hope they succeed too.An iOS/Android world would be pretty gray.

As for Elop, well, my view may be different from the Slashdot norm. Microsoft wants to sell Windows phones and, if they buy Nokia, the other second tier manufacturers may well take fright. If Elop genuinely saw the need for partnering, faced with the two elephants in the room, and pursued that as a strategy, then he deserves some credit.