On Thursday afternoon, Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) posted something on their Conversations blog titled “Benchmarking Mobile Maps”. Pino Bonetti from Nokia Maps takes the opportunity to compare their Ovi maps and their turn-by-turn directions with Apple’s mapping program on iOS 6. He said, “Unlike our competitors. which are financing their location assets with advertising, or licensing mapping content from third parties, we completely own, build and distribute our mapping content, platform, and apps.”
His blog post wasn’t all negative talk. He took the chance to promote Nokia’s maps, by pointing out that Nokia’s maps can be accessed both online and offline and the number of countries that they offer the turn-by-turn navigation features in.
Bonetti isn’t the only one to take a dig at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s mapping application. Matthew Panzarino from TNW wrote a review of the new app, and here’s what he had to say about the app’s worst attributes: “The biggest losers? Brazil, India, Taiwan, and Thailand, all of which lose Transit apps, and Traffic and StreetView. They also don’t have turn-by-turn navigation on any Flyover cities. 20 more countries are losing traffic data and/or Transit apps, and are getting no turn-by-turn back.”
Nokia recently decided to team up with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) to offer them mapping data for their Kindle devices. The online retail giant is also firing up an API platform. If there is one thing Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) has right, it’s their maps program, and it doesn’t hurt that they have been enhancing their coverage for years.
Despite their poorly designed maps application, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has aced every other feature. Perhaps Nokia could switch their focus towards their maps program and maybe they could team up with Apple, in order to offer them exclusive rights to use their mapping program. That would be a win-win situation for both companies.
Images courtesy of TNW
