Nokia's Ovi Maps to have Free navigation and turn by turn directions!

A wise move from Nokia. Ovi Maps on my N97 was absolutely stellar with the turn by turn directions, especially as it worked in offline mode. I could navigate even if my phone couldn’t get a signal. Not the same story with Google map, as great as it was,  which (not only did not have turn by turn on N97) required a constant internet connection.

Ovi Maps should have been free a long time ago. Get a huge customer base using y our services and make revenue another way.

Remember this? Ovi Maps Q&A with Nokia’s Arshia Varlet, Pino and Danesh

[Side note: Wouldn’t Nokia have made a bigger impact had they just bundled Sat Nav functionality totally free? Why go pay for alternatives when Nokia Maps, now Ovi Maps, could make your phone your sat nav device. Unlike TomTom or Google Maps, Nokia is relatively new to people’s minds when they think about navigation. If you give Sat Nav functionality for free, they’ll be more inclined to try it, (eventually use it as their sole/main Sat-nav) whereas by charging, you open the realms to other navigation solutions, and turn attention away from Ovi Maps. Isn’t it better to: grab the end user whilst you can? Whatever the traditional business models maybe for SatNav, Nokia are (or were) in a unique position to bundle SatNav experience to loyal consumers, but instead, try to get cash out of them. Some Nokia devices are already rolling out with free Navigation – what about making it free on all compatible devices? At least consider being free for the high end devices that cost in the region of £400 – £500. ]

October 24th 2009

Ms Varlet must have found it hard to keep secret Ovi Maps turn by turn being free after our grilling!

Is this the theme for today’s announcement? Maybe improved search, improved satellite coverage? Or is that it…:s

Here’s the info from Reuters:

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia will offer free navigation on its smartphones around the world, following a similar move from Google the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Thursday, citing the Finnish company.

Google started in late 2009 to offer free navigation on Motorola’s Droid model smartphones in the North American market.

“Nokia used to charge for navigation packages that included turn-by-turn directions. That all goes away now. Now you can get turn-by-turn directions covering 74 countries in 46 languages as well as detailed maps for 180 countries,” the report said.

Nokia offering free navigation on some 20 million smartphones is set to hurt key players on the global navigation market, including TomTom and Garmin. Nokia was not immediately available for comment.

via Reuters

Update: This is sort of sucky. According to Symbian-Guru, free Ovi Maps is available only on a select number of devices.

• Nokia N97 Mini
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
• Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition
• Nokia E52
• Nokia E55
• Nokia E72
• Nokia 5230
• Nokia 6710 Navigator
• Nokia 6730 classic
• Nokia X6

Seems no love for N97. W.T.F. If that’s true, I can’t imagine a bigger slap in the face. First, it should be free on ALL navigation devices. Second, after all that N97 users and early adopters had to suffer with buggy firmware and mal-performing hardware?

Update: N97 support is coming, in a weeks time. So yay! A lot of people have called this a big game changer. Have Nokia successfully killed standalone Sat Nav devices?

Tags: Free, Nokia, Ovi Maps

Category: Nokia