Nokia plans an ambitious expansion of its mapping and location-based services platform beyond its own smartphones to competing devices running OSes other than Windows Phone 8, it said Tuesday.
The move is being backed with the acquisition by Nokia of Earthmine, a California-based provider of street-level 3D imaging data, and will see Nokia going head-to-head with Google, Apple, and dedicated mapping companies like TomTom.
"We want to give everyone with any type of device to ability to use this, the best location platform in the industry," said Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, speaking at an event in San Francisco.
Nokia will use the "Here" brand name across its location platform.
The company hopes that by expanding its platform beyond its own handsets, it will benefit from the greater scale of the service and in turn make its own service better.
Nokia's platform includes mapping and satellite data, 75 million searchable points of interest, car and foot navigation data, and public transport information.
Already mapping
Nokia has already taken some steps towards opening up its mapping database. It has worked with car navigation system makers and other IT companies including Amazon and Oracle to license its maps, said Elop.
"We will do much, much more of this," he said.
As a first step, Nokia will launch on Apple's iOS in the coming weeks, said Michael Halbherr, head of Nokia's location and commerce division. The iOS version will be based on HTML5 but will appear to users like a native application, he said. It will offer maps, navigation, live traffic, public transport information and more.
Nokia has already submitted it to Apple's App Store, where the company plans to offer it for free.
The iOS version will offer turn-by-turn navigation for pedestrians but not for car drivers.
"When we look at turn-by-turn, we look at it in a different way," said Thom Brenner, vice president of Nokia's location and commerce business, in an interview. "Safety is very important and we don't think HTML5 is good enough for what we want."
Brenner didn't say if Nokia was developing a native iOS app.
A Here SDK (software development kit) for Android will be available in the first quarter of 2013. That will allow developers to embed Here Maps and make use of Nokia's location information in their own applications.
However, while software makers will be able to develop Android apps that make use of the location services, the services will only be available on handsets from companies with which Nokia has a licensing agreement, said Brenner.
That means Nokia's platform will only expand to Android devices if other handset makers—the company's rivals in the competitive smartphone market—license the technology.
Nokia will also work with Mozilla to bring a Here Maps app to the Firefox OS.
"People today already own multiple connected devices, so to have a proper solution for the consumer we need to make sure it works everywhere," said Halbherr.
Nokia Here map creator
Internet users can check out Nokia's new platform by looking at here.com, a freshly launched website that offers maps, satellite images and data on landmarks and shops. In a demonstration, Nokia showed a map of San Francisco that included 3D buildings and allowed the user to zoom and rotate the map in a similar fashion to Google Earth.
A mobile version of the site is available for cellphones.
Nokia also said it will open up the augmented reality platform used in its Nokia City Lens software. Called LiveSight, the data and software engine allows cellphone users to hold up their phones to see a live view of the world around them through the phone's camera with locations marked and overlaid on the image.
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The Nokia's Windows Phone event this morning, which showed off the new flagship Nokia Lumia 920 with a brief nod to the mode budget-friendly Nokia Lumia 820. Daniel Rubino from our Mobile Nations sibling site, WPCentral was there live to catch all the actions.
Along with some digs at Samsung (for their "first" Windows Phone 8 device being unfinished) and Apple (for putting needless metal elements in their antennas), Nokia threw the spotlight on location services, including their traditional maps products, transit directions (which will be offloaded to 3rd party apps in iOS 6), indoor directions, and some interesting if awkward Augmented Reality features. Inductive charging was also front-and-center, along with partnerships to bring compatible chargers to places like Virgin Atlantic lounges, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlets, and retails products like Fatboys.
Once again the materials look out of this world. Literally. Nokia stressed how you could pound nails with the Lumia 920. Literally. The screen is curved and gorgeous and intelligently tries to prevent glare when used outside. The assemblies are ceramic to prevent scratches, and the whole, solid unit looks built to last. Apple and Nokia are both making phenomenal, iconic hardware these days. No one else is coming close.
The most impressive part of the demo, however, was the Lumia 920 camera. Building off Nokia's PureView brand, it sports a massive, over-sampling lens with an f2.0 aperture that's essentially "floated" so it can capture more light, longer, and produce truly amazing images. A series of "lens" apps, including Microsoft's Photosynth allow for extended features and functionality as well.
It will be interesting to see if Phil Schiller, who's been handling the iPhone camera demos for the last few Apple events, can show off something competitive on September 12.
Microsoft's Joe Belfiore also previewed home screen tile customizations and a new feature of Windows Phone 8: Press the Home and Power button at the same time, and you get a screenshot. You're welcome, bloggers.
Steve Ballmer came out at the end to proclaim 2012 the "year of Windows", which was a bit odd since, from Microsoft's perspective, which year wouldn't be the year of Windows?
The biggest disappointment of the event, however, was that absolutely no pricing or launch date information was provided. Similar to the Microsoft Surface event, it smacked of something thrown together quickly to grab some b-roll from the iPhone 5, with neither the Windows Phone 8 feature set nor go-to-market strategy actually finished yet.
And that's too bad. Because those details matter. And you better believe that on September 12, Apple will announce a price and ship date for iPhone 5.
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Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Google's Motorola and Amazon have announced plans to launch new products and not surprisingly, just few days before Apple's rumored media event on September 12.So here's what Apple's competitors are likely to announce to try and steal some spotlight from Apple's event.
Samsung:
Samsung has scheduled an event on August 29, where it is widely expected to launch the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which may come with a slightly larger display (5.5-inch from 5.3-inch).
Nokia and Microsoft:
Nokia and Microsoft have announced a media event on September 5 in New York. It is speculated that Nokia will unveil next generation Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone 8.
Google's Motorola:
Google-owned Motorola has announced a media event on September 5 in New York. Motorola is widely expected to launch to launch Driod Razr HD with is rumored to come with a bigger battery, 8-megapixel camera, and NFC functionality.
Amazon:
Yesterday, Amazon has announced that it will hold a press conference on September 6. It looks like Amazon is gearing up to launch the next generation Kindle Fire and possibly even the rumored Kindle smartphone.
Apple:
It's not official, but Apple is widely expected to unveil the hotly next generation iPhone on September 12, followed by the release on September 21. There's also a slim chance that Apple will launch iPad mini, the next generation iPod touch and iPod Nano at the event. But as John Gruber of Daring Fireball has pointed out yesterday, Apple might have separate music event in October to launch the other products.
Do you think Amazon, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola will be able to steal the hype from the 'iPhone 5' launch?
