Elop: No to Fragmentation, Yes to Nokia Maps on more devices!

The people over at pocket-lint.com had a chance to interview S. Elop during CES ; although the full interview is up yet here are a couple of interesting points:

1- ‘Nokia Maps’ will accompany ‘Bing Maps’ on all devices, not just WP devices.

“You’ll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map that you get from Microsoft properties over a period of time,”

“Even if you are on a BlackBerry device, who recently said they were going to start using Bing Maps.”

According to Mr. Elop this was part of their initial agreement with Microsoft, a way to make their agreement more two-way than only one-sided; basically all and any device/OS that will run Bing Maps will also have ‘Nokia Maps’ branded onto the maps app, including RIM/Blackberry who will start using Bing Maps soon. It’s no secret that Nokia maps are quite superior when it comes to location related services, be it ‘Drive’, ‘Nearby’ or just ‘Offline maps’:

“We did that for important reasons as we had the better mapping assets so it made sense. But it also creates some balance in the relationship with Microsoft,”

This makes sense if you think of it as an infiltration of Nokia into other devices, giving them a taste of what Nokia can do; and of course it also proves that Nokia has a extremely Potent Software division besides its hardware section; meaning that it has more to offer users besides a nice design (which some companies can’t even offer *stern look at HTC* ).

2- Another topic worth mentioning is ‘Fragmentation’ which is a sort of yes/no opinion when it comes to WP, Android fans claim that fragmentation is a beautiful thing; Mr. Elop begs to differ:

“We don’t want fragmentation being introduced into Windows Phone because we are beginning to see how in a certain other eco-system that fragmentation becomes a problem.”

Of course that doesn’t mean Nokia isn’t going to take advantage of it’s exclusive rights from Microsoft, simply put the plan on making the Lumia range special without destroying shared apps between the different Manufacturers, while helping differentiate WP from Android and Apple.

“We have to help them understand that and we have to get the devices in their hands. Everything we are doing is focused on reducing the friction in that process. The point is, we are educating consumers about the tiles, about that experience; because what is out there in the industry today, people are most familiar with a grid of applications icons that don’t do anything. They aren’t used to things that are scrolling, that are alive, that are presenting information. So as we introduce them to that we are confident that we will see some good momentum.”

Pocket-Lint have promised to post the full interview on friday, till then check out the source links:

Fragmentation, Bing/Nokia Maps thanks to Prashant and Just visiting for the tips.

Category: Android, aPPLE, Nokia, Windows Phone