Nokia has announced it will buy German navigation software maker gate5 by the end of the year with the intent of offering maps on its mobile phones.
“Maps and navigation are natural elements to be offered in mobile devices but this area hasn’t developed as fast as expected by the market,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s general manager for multimedia. “Acquiring gate5 enables Nokia to offer consumers the world-leading mobile location applications, such as maps, routing and navigation at an accelerated speed.”
A lot of people have been assuming that Google will win the mobile map race (and mobile search etc) but mobile phones are different to PCs, and if the largest manufacturer in the world starts including map services as standard independent companies will find it a lot harder in the market.
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