More bad news for third-party satnav services.
Remember when Google put the wind up investors in GPS satnav firms by launching a free Google Maps-powered navigation app for Android handsets? Well, now Nokia has followed suit.
The company has announced plans for a new version of its Ovi Maps software that will include free walk and drive navigation, including turn-by-turn voice guidance and traffic information.
It's available now for 10 handsets, including the N97 Mini, 5800 XpressMusic and E72, with more to come this year. The company will start preloading the new Ovi Maps on its GPS-enabled smartphones with local country maps and extra Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides.
"Why have multiple devices that work that work in only one country or region," says EVP Anssi Vanjoki. "Put it all together, make it free, make it global and you almost double the potential size of the mobile navigation market."
The company put some numbers on this, citing Canalys figures claiming 27 million mobile GPS navigation users at the end of 2009, with Nokia predicting that the new Ovi Maps client will boost this to around 50 million.
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He's certainly bullish: "By adding cameras at no extra cost to our phones, we quickly became the biggest camera manufacturer in the world. The aim of the new Ovi Maps is to enable us to do the same for navigation."
Howvever, could there be trouble ahead with the operators, many of whom offer their own paid navigation services? It could ruffle feathers, as N-Gage and Comes With Music have before it.
Nokia hopes not, saying it reckons the new Ovi Maps will help them sell more unlimited data tariffs - and also that its uses "a fraction of the bandwidth" of the current operator services thanks to its vector graphics.
The implications will also be significant for those third-party navigation firms. As of now, two of the biggest smartphone platforms in the world - Android and Nokia's Symbian handsets - have free navigation offerings.
Meanwhile, Apple has its own plans to "take Maps to the next level" on iPhone, which could include navigation elements too.
But for now, the headache for the satnav firms is how to persuade Android and Nokia users to pay for their services when they have a free alternative - which will increasingly be preloaded on the phones when they buy them.
The full list of currently supported handsets for the new Ovi Maps: Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia 5800Navigation Edition, Nokia E52, Nokia E55, Nokia E72, Nokia 5230, Nokia 6710Navigator, Nokia 6730 classic and Nokia X6.
