Similar, but still different.
Maps are big for Nokia this year. In fact, they seem to have become the company's top priority when it comes to services, vaulting over music and games.
And it's not just maps as used for navigating from point A to point B, but maps and location making their way into other services, including social media. In fact, it's not fanciful to suggest that Nokia is gearing up to take on Google in terms of getting its maps out there into the web world.
More on that tomorrow morning. But ME sat down with Nokia's SVP of Services Niklas Savander to talk about the company's approach to maps and location, including the question of how its strategy compares to Google's.
“Essentially the strategies are relatively similar, but the starting points are different,” he says. “We start with the assumption that this needs to be optimised for when you are on the go, whereas the Google starting point is the Web.”
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“For example, our maps are vectorised, because downloading a vectorised map of Germany is maybe two megabytes, but it's two gigabytes if it's a bitmap,” he says. “This makes no difference if you have broadband to your PC, but it makes a huge difference on mobile in the many markets without flat data rates.”
For something like Google Maps on the iPhone, this isn't so much of a problem, given that the handset is usually sold with a flat-rate data tariff (although speed of download is another story). But it may become more of an issue in emerging markets like India and China. Talking of which...
“The other difference would be the accuracy of the map. We have this thing: if you need a map, it's not good enough just to model London, San Francisco and New York – you need to have Bangalore, Manila... The accuracy of our navigable maps is a lot broader.”
However, Nokia certainly isn't pitching itself on a collision path with Google in the same way that it's kicking back against Apple.
“Philosophically, we [Nokia and Google] are both on a similar path, which is believing that location is providing a new dimension in the digital world,” says Savander. “If you are more web-oriented as a company or consumer, you might see a better fit with the starting point of Google. If you're more mobile-oriented for on-the-go use cases, you're likely to find our solution a lot more optimised.”
He pauses, possibly for effect. “But it's a race to the same middle point!”
We'll have more from Savander on Nokia's plans for maps and location-based services tomorrow morning, along with details of the company's announcements around Ovi Maps.
