Following yesterday’s Nokia Ovi Maps announcement even Hitler has folded bought a Nokia and written off his TomTom investment.
via YouTube – Hitler Finds Out Nokia’s Ovi Maps Turn By Turn navigation is now free.
A couple of things to remember… other than the war is not over….
- Upgrading a slightly older Nokia to a free Drive maps is too difficult for most. However, take your Nokia to India and your local repair guy will soon do it for you for just a few rupees. (So how fast Nokia can you get it working on many current phones? And what’s your program?)
- When will OviMaps make it to a $50 or less handset? Today that would be a compelling purchase edge, in 18 months that could be too late. This really matters in markets where there is little data, or it is very expensive or frequently not available.
- When will Nokia integrate OviMaps with SMS updates for a complete non-data solution? Will Nokia provide an easy to use API for it. Developers need to know this. Currently the OVI SDK is closed to further developers (per website today)
- OviMaps will not enable or sustain a Nokia Brand premium. You won’t get an extra $20 per phone. Although… you may make it other ways (advertising etc.) if you make it easy to build things.
- High-end Smart Phone users won’t switch phones just for a map app. If the map app is really better then put it on other platforms too. Unless you can get it to the $50 phones very quickly… although the old ones won’t upgrade to maps.. that’s impossible.
- Why can’t I use the web version on my phone? Your site say OVIMaps isn’t available for mobile web browsers. If you are really better, faster etc than Google then perhaps it should be. I am always interested in a better map.
- On the PC… value added features involve a plug-in. 32bit (sort of whatever that means I followed the directions) which I couldn’t get to work in Safari and isn’t available on Firefox to Mac users. Will have to check if that depreciates my Safari browser performance.
So a salvo was fired and announcements made… it will all be in the execution. We are a long way still from a blitzkrieg.
