14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia, the largest mobile manufacturer, has recently announced an alpha version of their Maps on Ovi. The announcement, or better yet, the showing, was made yesterday at the Where 2.0 conference. The alpha version of Maps is said to allow Nokia phone users to share photos, videos, music and much more, directly from their mobile phones.
It appears that the new Nokia Maps are something to be expected, being an experience that is said to be better than the one offered by Google, with its Google Maps. The possibility of Nokia releasing their own Maps application is going to place the mobile phone giant as a direct competitor against Google. It seems that the guys at Gadget Lab managed to get their hands on a demo of Nokia's Maps and they were impressed by it.
If Google's Maps has a tendency of rendering images in a slow manner, Nokia's future-to-be product will provide its users with fast access to displayed maps. This will be possible mainly due to the fact that Nokia is going to use vector-based maps that perform the redrawing on the users' computers, not on servers. According to Nokia's Michael Halbherr, the company's target is to take on a more "cloud computing" approach. This will enable Nokia to scale to billions of users, without massive requirements of power.
One of the innovative features of Maps on Ovi will be to allow pedestrian users to calculate itineraries, a thing that none of the existent map services provide. After the route is calculated, users can take it to Nokia Maps and test it out. According to Nokia's executives, the company's intention is to extend the Nokia Maps experience to the PC, rather than to replace Google Maps.
Ultimately, Halbher has admitted that Nokia will become Google's competitor, as future development of Nokia's Maps application will be similar to what Google is trying to accomplish with its application.