Skift Take
The $8 billion Navteq acquisition has to do something for Nokia, right? Likely this focus on maps will means this unit will survive as a spinoff at some point, while rest of Nokia will keep going through bouts of identity crisis.
Nokia still hasn’t found its way to a successful comeback in the smartphone market. But the company is hoping to get its tentacles into competitors’ phones through mapping applications, a move it hopes will help it improve its maps.
The company will release a maps app called Here in Apple’s App Store. It will be a free download for iOS and will release a toolkit for programmers to make Nokia-powered mapping apps for Android phones. And it is forming a partnership with Mozilla, the browser company, to develop location features for its new operating system, called Firefox OS.
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