Total chat site for users of phone services

New content from Qype with community based recommendations helps everyone make the most of their time

Ovi Maps, the free walk and drive navigation service from Nokia, announced new partnerships that deliver more relevant information on more points of interest making travelling easier than ever. With summer holidays fast approaching, the updated Ovi Maps gives travelers and locals alike the ability to find the most interesting places and sites in the area making traveling less about getting from A to B and more about enjoying everything in between.

Ovi delivers unique mobile experiences that mix content with the best location, social networking and connectivity services and is the go to-place for discovering, sharing and enjoying lifestyle content and entertainment, all from a Nokia smartphone.  

New partnership with Qype delivers community based recommendations
Ovi Maps now includes Qype, Europe’s biggest portal for local community-based reviews, helping people find new places wherever they are, leaving nothing overlooked.

Initially offering information on more than 20,000 cities, the Qype community enriches Ovi Maps with hundreds of thousands of reviews and recommendations from locals and travelers on  many European hotspots like cafés, shops, spas and hotels, giving the inside track before arriving. And, with a new post added to Qype every 40 seconds, people are assured to have the latest information to help them make the best choices no matter what they are looking for.

More tailored and personal trips
In total,Ovi Maps now offers Nokia smartphone users access to more than 25 million points of interest worldwide.  Whether people are looking for a souvenir shop or a youth hostel, trips can be personalized and planned right down to the last detail with map data from NAVTEQ and city guides from Lonely Planet, WCities and Michelin. Agreements with leading directory companies such as telegate in Germany, Turkey Yellow Pages and Yell Publicidad-Páginas Amarillas in Spain make it even easier than before to find the closest pharmacy, cash machine, shop or service. Hotel booking services such as HRS and Expedia make it easy to find a place to stay.

In-car navigation made easier
For people planning a road trip, Nokia has started to include car kits with new smartphones in-the-box* at no extra cost which makes finding new places and navigating whilst driving safe and easy. And, with the added convenience of pedestrian routes for exploring cities on foot, swapping the phone from car to pocket makes navigating around new places easier, no matter how people choose to do it.

Holidaymakers can plan routes before leaving the house, on a computer or laptop and simply upload them onto a Nokia device to use when abroad. This saves time searching for routes when out and about and enables people to use maps in offline mode, reducing roaming costs when traveling in foreign countries.

The latest version of Ovi Maps (3.04) is available to download for free from www.nokia.com/maps

Nokia has today announced that since the 21 January 2010 launch of the new version of Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation, there have been over 1.4 million downloads. The one million mark was reached just one week after the launch.

“We’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia. “When we announced free walk & drive navigation we knew it would be a game-changer. The number of people now using their Nokia for navigation, and as a result looking for more location-aware software, is growing faster than even we predicted.”

The success of the new version Ovi Maps is a key part of Nokia’s strategy to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services.  By leveraging its investment in NAVTEQ, Nokia has been able to remove the costs associated with navigation for drivers and pedestrians and is quickly activating a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services.

“This is great news for our 3rd party application developers.  Within a matter of days there is an installed base of more than 1 million active users all potentially hungry for new and innovative location-aware apps,” continued Anssi Vanjoki.  “For the operators too there is a growing opportunity to sell more data-plans and a complete navigation package to existing and new customers.”

As of 31 January 2010 the top five countries downloading the new version of Ovi Maps were: China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain. The top five most popular Nokia devices installing the download were: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia N97, Nokia 5230 and Nokia E72.

“There is a huge appetite for GPS navigation on mobile phones. We estimate there were already 25.9 million people actively using GPS navigation on their mobile phones at the end of 2009,” said Chris Jones, VP & Principal Analyst at research firm Canalys. 

From next month, all new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost. 

Ovi Maps covers more than 180 countries with car and pedestrian navigation for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries. There are more than 6000 3D landmarks for 200 cities around the world.  Lonely Planet and Michelin guides have information on more than 1,000 destinations globally.

Nokia has today announced that since the 21 January 2010 launch of the new version of Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation, there have been over 1.4 million downloads. The one million mark was reached just one week after the launch.

“We’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia. “When we announced free walk & drive navigation we knew it would be a game-changer. The number of people now using their Nokia for navigation, and as a result looking for more location-aware software, is growing faster than even we predicted.”

The success of the new version Ovi Maps is a key part of Nokia’s strategy to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services. By leveraging its investment in NAVTEQ, Nokia has been able to remove the costs associated with navigation for drivers and pedestrians and is quickly activating a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services.

“This is great news for our 3rd party application developers. Within a matter of days there is an installed base of more than 1 million active users all potentially hungry for new and innovative location-aware apps,” continued Anssi Vanjoki. “For the operators too there is a growing opportunity to sell more data-plans and a complete navigation package to existing and new customers.”

As of 31 January 2010 the top five countries downloading the new version of Ovi Maps were: China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain. The top five most popular Nokia devices installing the download were: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia N97, Nokia 5230 and Nokia E72.

“There is a huge appetite for GPS navigation on mobile phones. We estimate there were already 25.9 million people actively using GPS navigation on their mobile phones at the end of 2009,” said Chris Jones, VP & Principal Analyst at research firm Canalys.

From next month, all new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost.

Ovi Maps covers more than 180 countries with car and pedestrian navigation for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries. There are more than 6000 3D landmarks for 200 cities around the world. Lonely Planet and Michelin guides have information on more than 1,000 destinations globally.

Nokia Press release

San Jose, CA, USA – Nokia today presented the next step in its social location journey with the announcement of the latest version of Ovi Maps, fast becoming a unique, dynamic and personalized canvas – sychronized and shared between the mobile and the web – upon which people will be able to add personal location-based content. This also marks a shift from the one-size-fits-all static bitmap maps commonly found on the web, to using Nokia’s dynamic vector-graphic maps as a browser for all your personal map experiences – whether on the web or on your compatible mobile device.

Nokia also announced the release of the Ovi Maps Player API, a simple way to embed the rich and dynamic Ovi Maps experience into any compatible website using basic JavaScript. This opens the Ovi Maps service and technology for third parties wishing to add greater contextual innovation to their websites for a deeper level of integration, sharing and collaboration with their audiences. Now websites like lonelyplanet.com or social networking sites can include Ovi Maps which can be personalized with their users’ collections of content and then synchronized onto their compatible mobile devices.

“Ovi Maps is evolving from a consumer service to a live and dynamic platform for location-based services and content shared between the mobile device and the web. By adding this richer dimension to Ovi Maps we are both creating new experiences for consumers and new opportunities for developers,” says Michael Halbherr, vice president, Social Location services at Nokia. “The Ovi Maps Player API offers an open and easy-to-use map browser based on simple web technologies that can be embedded into any website. This is the first step toward an ecosystem where developers can access Nokia’s unique contextual assets, such as location, to create mobile applications that will redefine how we use our mobile devices. ”

“We are thrilled to be one of the first companies to be working with the Ovi Maps Player API”, says Stephen Palmer, President, Lonely Planet, EMEA. “This is a transformational partnership, which makes Lonely Planet content available regardless of time or place. Working with this new platform adds value to the Lonely Planet offering and together with Nokia we will help more travellers connect profoundly with their world, everyday.”

The future of mapping is here

The latest version of Ovi Maps application on your device is enhanced through additional features and services, opening up a new world of possibilities with better maps than ever before: high resolution satellite and terrain maps – both in 2D and 3D views – 3D landmarks for over 200 cities, rotation, tilting, night view, and fly-overs and fly-throughs. Ovi Maps also offers enriched POI information by Lonely Planet, Michelin and Wcities, as well as a weather service that provides 24 hour and 5-day forecasts. Walk from one place to another by using Walk, pedestrian navigation with routing optimized for those on foot, providing better orientation in a city or outdoors. Or use Drive, fully fledged car navigation with enhanced safety and real-time traffic information covering now more countries.

With Ovi Maps on the web you can also search for addresses and POIs, find places and save them into Favorites, and organize them into Collections. Check the weather situation and preplan routes for walking or driving – and then save them. Your places, collections and routes can also be synchronized over-the-air between Ovi Maps on your compatible mobile device and Ovi Maps on the web.

The Ovi Maps Beta on the web is accessible at www.maps.ovi.com.
The latest version of the Ovi Maps Beta for your device is available for download at Nokia Betalabs at www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps.

Unleashing the innovation with ‘Apps on Maps’ contest
As one of the first steps to opening Ovi Maps towards developers, Nokia is inviting ideas for services and content on Maps through the Calling All Innovators contest in a specific category: “Apps on Maps”. The finalists will have a chance to work closely with Nokia to develop their ideas into applications and be part of shaping the developer tools. In addition to winning cash prizes, the finalists will also have a chance to see their apps distributed via the Ovi Store.

More information on the soon to be launched Ovi Maps Player API beta program and ‘Apps on Maps’ category in the 2009 Calling All Innovators contest is available at http://forum.nokia.com/ovi