nancy_gohring
Writer

Nokia to add mapping service in all converged phones

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Jan 8, 20072 mins

Nokia to add Smart2Go mapping and routing service to all converged devices

Nokia Corp. plans to include the mapping and routing service it acquired along with Gate5 AG last year in all of its converged devices, the phone giant said at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Monday.

The capability, called Smart2Go, will offer free mapping and routing services to users and will also include a turn-by-turn navigation service for a fee. The offering will work in tandem with GPS (Global Positioning Service), which Nokia is increasingly including in its phones.

Smart2Go customers will use Wi-Fi or a direct connection to a PC to download maps to the phones. The service currently includes maps for 100 countries and more than 13 million icons on the maps that indicate sites like restaurants, hotels and gas stations.

Users can search for restaurants based on cuisine type and the results will be listed based on proximity to the user. The results include links to directions and reviews, and the ability to call the restaurant directly.

Last year, Nokia began to focus heavily on including location services in its phones. In addition to the Gate5 buy, Nokia acquired the exclusive right to license and sublicense 700 GPS patents owned by Trimble Navigation Ltd.

Half of people that Nokia recently surveyed said they’d like to have maps and information about their surrounding area in their phones, said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chairman and chief executive of Nokia. “It’s a natural for mobile phones to do this,” he said while speaking at CES.

nancy_gohring

Nancy Gohring is a freelance journalist who started writing about mobile phones just in time to cover the transition to digital. She's written about PCs from Hanover, cellular networks from Singapore, wireless standards from Cyprus, cloud computing from Seattle and just about any technology subject you can think of from Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Computerworld, Wired, the Seattle Times and other well-respected publications.

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