Nokia may tell struggling HERE Maps division to get lost – report Nokia may not be done selling itself off in pieces, with sources claiming the Finnish firm may be looking to unload its HERE Maps division. Bloomberg reports that Nokia has been shopping the unit to a number of potential buyers, among them some private equity firms, a group of German automakers, and even unlicensed taxi app …
Time to remember the part Here played in pushing Nokia to Windows rather than Android. In a small way (compared to the total mismanagement) that obsession with the mapping crown jewels killed Nokia as a mobile supplier.
Even now they've allowed it onto android the app can be a PIA to use.
I'm on holiday in Lanzarote at the moment and while it works pretty well, some of its directions are frankly extremely dodgy. Yesterday it told me to turn the wrong way up a one way street, flagged a restaurant I searched for as being in the ocean, kept saying "turn right and then right" instead of "turn right" and chose some very dodgy routes up mountains when straighter main roads were available. It also pronounced all the places with an English accent - Arrecife became arse-e-ife.
Another time when I was in the US it got stuck in a loop - it told me to do a U turn, which I did and then it told me to do another U-turn. I had to drive off a bit to get any sense back into it.
That said, it's free and it has offline support so it's still a very valuable app to have on a phone. The Android version also has a far better UI than the Windows Phone version though it still has some annoyances.
Welcome to the Canaries.
I know the Canaries like the back of my hand - when we were younger and not slaves to the school vacation schedule we used to go there 4 times a year and return rentals with 2k+ clocked in 10 days or so. I would not use any Sat Nav there. The one place in Europe (if that still counts as Europe) where the good old paper map is still invaluable. Always get one from the rental company - it is worth it.
On Lansarote - you may still get some resemblance of directions. On Tenerife it is hilarious - you get (nearly all satnavs) rating the 2.5m wide alleys between the banana fields as equal with a normal road. However, in either case, it kind'a works.
Try it on La Palma or El Hierro. Even Google Maps has whole "urbanizacions" mapped erroneously to a single street and has no idea about 95% of the postcodes and streets in most cities.
So a SatNav not working on the Canaries is not an indication that it is a bad SatNav. It may be perfectly viable (nearly) anywhere else in the world. Even in the darkest, deepest Eastern Europe where most SatNavs have only the motorways in their database.
I agree. As a Nokia refugee it is nice to have HERE on Android....
I guess, at least you can download all the maps, and that will be sufficient for most purposes...
It's a strange world that has evolved in that technologies get invented, refined and yet inexplicably we don't end up with the best technology - just the most commercially viable...
Just a thought...
P.
It's a strange world that has evolved in that technologies get invented, refined and yet inexplicably we don't end up with the best technology - just the most commercially viable...
Just a thought...
There's probably a book or two somewhere in that statement and trying to explain the "why". There's been a lot of great (to me at least) tech that got bought by someone else and then promptly put away in a dark back room because it competed with the buyer's inferior tech. Glide is a pertect example. Bought by NVidia and then promptly shut down and all the tech put into storage or binned. For the time, Glide was graphics to beat on games. But NVidia had bigger dollars tucked away and was buying up competitors.
It's a strange world that has evolved in that technologies get invented, refined and yet inexplicably we don't end up with the best technology - just the most commercially viable...
If Worstall hasn't already posted some stream-of-consciousness about why this is better for everyone and anyone who thinks otherwise is just wrong then I'm sure he soon will do.
It is surprisingly not all about mobile and apps. HERE supplies map data to the bulk of in-car integrated satnav systems, they are also the mapping provider behind the curtain for all Garmin devices. These markets represent the revenue stream for them not mobile/apps.
I'd put money on a consortium of German auto makers buying the business with here gone they have to either deal with TomTom/TeleAtlas or Google.
Pureview has been stagnant since the 1020, which itself was just an effort in making the Symbian 808's camera and drivers work on Windows Phone because people were starting to notice and it was looking a bit embarassing. Nokia's camera wizard jumped ship to Apple so don't expect any great cameras on Lumia phones from now on.
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