Nokia surprised by popularity of free navigation

Anssi Vanjoki

print this

The free navigation services offered by Nokia on certain models of mobile phones have proven to be considerably more popular than the company dared predict.
      Nokia says that in just over a week, more than 1.4 million people have downloaded the navigation service, with an average of one download per second, 24 hours a day.
      “Our ambitious goal was to get a million downloads in a week. The target was exceeded by 40 per cent, which is considerable. In addition, it seems that the rate of downloads per second is on the increase”, says Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Nokia’s Markets unit.
     
On January 21st Nokia turned its navigation service, for which subscribers had to pay, into a free service on January 21st.
      In just over a week, the free service has been downloaded most actively in China, Italy, Britain, Germany, and Spain.
     
The core of the service is the map company Navteq, which Nokia bought for EUR 5.7 billion in October 2007.
      “When we acquired Navteq, we had the vision that combining location information with social information is a central part of new services. In this we are now a leading company in the world”, Vanjoki says.
      Location information usually means information on the location of a device through satellite positioning. Positioning can also take place through cellular information of the mobile telephone network, but it is not as accurate.
     
The free navigation service is also important for telecommunications operators, which make considerable efforts to keep existing customers. Navigation services call for data transfer in the mobile telephone network, which gives the consumer an incentive to include a data package for a flat fee in his or her subscription.
      “With the navigation services, we make it easier for operators to sell data packages, which bind the customers with them for longer periods of time. Operators can add their own applications to our navigation and map services, which make it easier for them to distinguish themselves from their competitors.”
     
Vanjoki believes that in the long term, digital maps will become a global subscription for various services, which will lead to the establishment considerable amounts of new business activities.
      “If we consider all of the telephones in which our free navigation service can be used in the near future, our service is the most popular in the world”, Vanjoki says.
      The service works with 11 Nokia models. In the coming months, the number of devices that are compatible with the service will grow considerably.
     
Nokia’s aim is to get 300 million active users for the service by the end of 2011. At the end of last year, turnover for Nokia’s service business was EUR 169 million.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nokia to introduce free navigation services to boost smartphone sales (22.1.2010)

Helsingin Sanomat