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Nokia Keeps Quietly Mapping The World
LucidBeast writes "Mapping the world isn't easy as our friends in Cupertino have found out. Google's maps seem ubiquitous, but there is a less known real heavyweight still mapping the world. Nokia acquired Navteq in 2007, and five years later they are still reading fleet data and scanning cities with LIDAR and 360 degree cameras."
That would solve their map problem.
They can afford it.
Everyone will be happy.
But MSFT.
Don't do it!
A good friend of mine works in this department as a product manager; he has been there since they were NavTeq. You should take a look at Nokia's financials before busting out the "M$ evil" conspiracy theories. The navigation unit is the only part of the company that is profitable right now. They have excellent data (probably the best available, mention is halfway down the page) and they do a lot more with it than put it in phones. Basically, anybody who needs to have vetted data (ie, when salesmen need to tell clients that the data is better than what they can get online for free) to put in a product use Nokia maps. Many high-end cars with built in navigation are using them for example.
The higher-ups at Nokia know this. They are trying to leverage this to position the company for growth. Their internal mantra is that "Google is what, Microsoft is who, and we are _where_". Hence, the publicity: this is the only bright spot for Nokia and they need to milk it. If you ask me, they are grasping at straws; but the I can see the logic.
www.mapquest.com
Some cars have forward facing cameras already for lane keeping systems or lane departure warning. Some of these cameras can read signs and let you know if you're speeding, etc. Ultimately it may be the car companies who have the best maps which might be updated continuously by tens of millions of cars. Hmmm time for me to transfer to the driver assistance systems part of the company....
This may also explain why Google wants driverless cars, so they can fully automate the data collection.
Offline maps. When I got rid of my Nokia N8 and bought a Samsung SIII, there were two things I missed, one is the camera (the N8's was far better in several ways), the other is the maps. With the Nokia you got offline maps for the entire world and the app itself was excellent (though it had teething problems to start with). Turn by turn directions that don't sound like a robot (I'm looking at you Google), were as good as or better than most commercial Sat Nav devices, accurate (looking at you Apple), regularly updated and, I'll say it again, offline maps! In Australia at least you can be quite often out of range of a decent data connection.
The commercial Navigon app that I got bundled with my SIII is definitely inferior and you only get maps for Oceania, I have to buy the European/US ones if I need them.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
TeleAtlas isn't to blame for most of the iPhone Maps app problems I've heard about. You can blame the map provider if a road is missing or mislabled, or an address is down the street, but that's about it.
The failed searches and missing home/business locations are a matter of Apple's POI search system being horrible (something Google does well), which switching to NAVTEQ or any other map provider won't fix for them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
AAPL could also buy TomTom, one of the main suppliers of maps for IOS6. According to TomTom, their data is fine, but the integration of their data and other sources seems to be causing Apples problems on IOS6. Nokia has the legacy weight of a phone division, while TomTom is barely making any hardware themselves these days and is only into maps and services related to that. At the current price point, TomTom would be far more interesting for AAPL than NOK would be.
TomTom already has an extreme amount of experience in making map applications work on several platforms and they have a foot in the door with several car manufacturers that use TomTom data and applications on their on-board systems. This would give them an entrance in a market they currently are not in. How would you think "iTunes on your car" and "iOS apps on your car" would sound to most people? The first car to offer that would no doubt get a lot of publicity and sales, unless it was a true lemon. TomTom could very well be their entrance into that market and Nokia only has Navteq maps and a bunch of patents as a valuable asset. The patents are being sold off rapidly to fund the rest of the company, so the merit of that is rapidly diminishing. Putting a suffering phone division against the Navteq bit, you don't have a lot of value left I think.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?