In a daring move which will inevitably make Nokia look very silly after HTC’s announcements, the Finnish company sent a bunch of balloon-bearing people down to the Desire event in London, boasting of their Ovi Maps service. The cheek!
Ovi Maps has been a focal point for Nokia in the last few weeks since they gave it all away for free, so it’s not surprising a hardware company wants to use their turn-by-turn navigation for cars.
Why’d Nokia give away Ovi Maps for free to other OS users? Unless they’re… planning an Android phone themselves? We’ve already heard whispers they’re to release just one Maemo device this year – and they can’t possibly survive on Symbian for alone.
After 13 days Nokia had seen 1.4 million downloads of its free Ovi Maps. Now, less than a month after giving away the good for free, they’ve seen three million downloads – with a map being downloaded every second. [TechRadar]
When Nokia announced free Ovi Maps for all, I was a bit ho-hum about it all. NOW I am excited. But not to the point where I’ll actually buy a Nokia phone to play Ovi Maps Racing on, mind.
After Nokia gave away its Ovi Maps for free on January 21 – that’s just 13 days ago – they’ve seen 1.4 million downloads. “We’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day” claimed Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki. [Mobile-Ent]
