Weekend Read: NokConv – How Nokia can still differentiate with location-based services

This is a follow up story to the news that WP8 phones will all get Nokia Drive.

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/06/20/err-nokia-drive-for-all-wp8-phones/

We heard Elop mention that there was more to come. Whilst there is location and navigation in step 0 and 1, Nokia knows how to do more with steps 2-5. I don’t like step 5s things at all. Remember the last great step 4 before we killed it off in trying to make step 5? :/

Anyway, here is NokConv’s response:

http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/06/29/how-nokia-can-still-differentiate-with-location-based-services/

• would you ever buy a smartphone that doesn’t play music? The same rule is very quickly being applied to navigation too.
• we are going to license Nokia Drive, the best navigation solution on the market, to all Windows Phone 8 devices
• Nokia Drive might not be exclusive to Nokia smartphones anymore but that doesn’t mean that we can’t differentiate with apps anymore. How can we still do it?
• First of all, navigation on Windows Phone 8 will be always exclusively provided by Nokia.
• Then by having the very closest, deepest integration possible
• So watch this space for more apps and upgrades that become a seamless aspect of the overall Nokia Lumia experience.

OK. I like the sound of a more integrated seamless Nokia Drive experience in lumia. I love Nokia Drive. I can find where I am and get directions where I need to be in seconds. But I hate it whenever I’m in another app and it decides to give me directions using the ridiculous Bing maps.

• But there is more to it than this. In fact, this is an area that creates a lot of confusion when people don’t distinguish between apps and platform.
• he Nokia Location Platform (often referred to by us as the Where Platform) provides a set of APIs that let organisations develop map-related apps and services.
• Location business is apparently ingredients, recipe is the app that makes something useful out of it, each custom made for a particular ‘appetite’.  Developers are the ‘cooks’. Nokia’s location platform is ‘mother nature’ I guess and not the fake, synthetic, possibly health harming tripe.
• “Perhaps you can now see that the location business is not only about apps (final products) but also, and most importantly, about the platform (ingredients and recipes).”
• By opening the location platform to the whole Windows Phone 8 ecosystem, we are differentiating Nokia as a company because we are the company most able to cover the location business on all levels.

Does this answer the question for me on how SPECIFICALLY Nokia Lumia range would differentiate in terms of mapping if ALL WP8 phones would get Nokia Drive? It seems to want to address the bigger picture of the Nokia Location Business as a whole differentiating itself from Google and now Apple’s offerings.

Update: It seems some of you were as confused as I was. Here’s Janne’s reply to another reader, who found it made more sense than the original article:

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/07/01/weekend-read-nokconv-how-nokia-can-still-differentiate-with-location-based-services/comment-page-1/#comment-607554

The point in ecosystems is three-fold:

1) First, because Android offers location and navigation to its licensees as a part of the base package, WP needs to do it too to ne attractive to licensees – and also developers to make location-based apps.

2) Second, location also is a platform and an ecosystem, basically the threeway competition between Nokia, Google and some others lead by Apple. Selling a location platform is becoming a major industry as location-aware services, advertising and the like spread.

3) One of Nokia’s businesses is selling their location platform and through this partnership they’ve sold is as the exclusive solution for Windows Phone 8. They will license it to others as part of this business, strenghtening Nokia’s location ecosystem, while also boosting the WP ecosystem (also good for Nokia) and getting paid for it.

Above these platform and ecosystem business principles lay the actual location-based services, which will be the next step of differentiation and innovation. The steps 2 to 5

Category: Nokia