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Nokia To Make GPS Navigation Free On Smartphones
mliu writes "In what is sure to be a blow to the already beleaguered stand-alone GPS market, Nokia, the global leader in smartphone market share, has released a fully offline-enabled free GPS navigation and mapping application for its Symbian smartphones. Furthermore, the application also includes Lonely Planet and Michelin guides. Unfortunately, the N900, which is beloved by geeks for its Maemo Linux-based operating system, has not seen any of the navigation love so far. With Google's release of Google Navigation for Android smartphones, and now Nokia doing one better and releasing an offline-enabled navigation application, hopefully this is the start of a trend where this becomes an expected component of any smartphone."
You overestimate their loss of marketshare. The smartphone market is a tiny part of the overall phone market, and its only there that they've lost anything at all. They're still the 800 lbs gorilla.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The problem is, will Nokia keep on updating their free directions?
You do realize that Nokia owns Navteq which re-sells the map data to other companies. Free doesn't mean that it can't be monetized and profitable.