Nokia was the first to hit the nail on the head –with smart phones coming fully equipped with GPS, access to map data and general web connectivity, it makes more sense to have your mobile phone act as a satellite navigation device. Originally, the Ovi Maps services was being offered for a reasonable fee, but with fierce competition from dedicated sat nav devices, Nokia found it best to go all out and announce that their Ovi maps voice guided sat nav services will be made available for free.
It did not take long for Google to join in the bandwagon. Fully equipped with Google Maps, Street View, advanced voice recognition software and an existing array of web services, their announcement that all Android devices would have free sat nav services seemed like it would be the final nail on the coffin. No doubt TomTom and similar companies felt the big change in the air as Google became part of the picture.
Now that picture is about to get even more crowded with Microsoft’s announcement that they too will be offering free sat nav services. Thanks to the technology of Bing Maps, MS is able to also provide a decent degree of GPS coverage and service to users (though it will never be as extensive as Google’s).
Right now, the service has been made available to mobile phones with GPS and uses the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS and later versions. It is expected that the service would also be available in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile platform as well.
Much like Google’s sat nav service, Bing Maps makes extensive use of it’s’ search engine capabilities to help users easily find important locations and addresses. If you are a WinMo 6.X user, simply download the latest update of the Bing app in order to get the feature.
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