Psh. Google and Apple — these two mere mapping mortals; don’t they know they face much bigger competition than each other? “The next dimension of Google Maps” — give me a break. In the midst of all the I-can-jump-rope-longer-than-you-can type warfare between these two amateurs, Nokia wants to give us a friendly reminder of who the real champion is.
“We’re basically the world’s largest mapping company,” said Hans Peter Brondmo, head of innovation for Nokia’s Location and Commerce business. Basically. The company’s maps platform powers 176 million devices in 196 countries for over 50 different languages. Its presence is particularly notable in many Yahoo services and it also feeds data to Microsoft’s Bing Maps.
Even the OpenStreetMap platform has been getting more attention than Nokia these days. Foursquare ditched Google Maps recently in favor of the open source solution as did Apple in the new iPhoto for iOS app.
Meanwhile, Nokia’s biggest competition is the 3D technology Google just announced and Apple will presumably be announcing on Monday. Apple previously used Google Maps to power its Maps app but as tension built between the two companies, that’s expected to change with iOS 6 as Apple enters with its own solution for mapping.
Hold up, though. Brondmo said Nokia has big plans, too. The goal for its maps platform is to eventually be able to “every question with a ‘where’ in it” a user asks. Integration with other apps should help the company achieve this goal down the road. For now, Brondmo is silently waiting for the “interesting things” Google and Apple unveil before Nokia launches its plan of attack.
[via CNET]