14 DAY TRIAL // Bad news for Windows Phone fans who own a Nokia Lumia smartphone, as the Finnish company has just confirmed it has just kicked off the rollout of advertisements on some of its Windows Phone 8 application.
WPCentral forum user speedtouch discovered that HERE Maps is now displaying ads when searching for various POIs (points of interest). But the information has been confirmed by someone from the HERE team who had this to say:
“After rolling out advertisements (e.g. with Groupon) on here.com, we are introducing them on Windows Phone 8 apps too. In the specific case of HERE Maps, we are displaying locally relevant ads in search results and nearby places.
In this example the place 'Grossman Iron & Steel Co' is visible on the map and if you want to see what their offer is all about, you can click on the banner to open the browser.”
Unfortunately, for the time being HERE Maps does not have an option to disable ads and customers cannot pay money to remove this feature yet.
Also, pino's reply suggests that Nokia might introduce ads in other Windows Phone 8 applications developed by its engineers.
Many Lumia smartphone users reading pino's statement expressed their negative feelings towards Nokia's move to introduce ads into the most popular navigation application available on Windows Phone devices.
User FrostyCamel had this to say: “I find this completely unacceptable, especially since Nokia has disabled Bing maps and has made HERE maps the default mapping app on all Lumias. I paid right at $500 for this phone. I should NEVER have to see ANY adds on ANY default apps.”
John20212 offers his thoughts on Nokia's decision to bring ads into HERE Maps as well: “There should be an option to disable adds, especially on high end Lumia phones like the 1020 which cost $800+ in many countries.
HERE maps is the default app after you removed the link to Bing maps, and also HERE maps was advertised as a key feature of the Lumia line without annoying adds being present and taking up valuable screen real-estate. I just find it a bit deceitful that you have decided to put in adds with no notice to existing users or any way to disable them.”