Nokia intros cloud-based location service "Here"

Nokia’s business will not only focus on basic phones, smartphones, cellular infrastructure and patents as the company is also looking forward in including location services as part of its business model.

This week, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop introduced their own cloud-based location service called “Here”.

Nokia powers popular maps such as that of Bing and Yahoo. And since the brand is promising a new mapping service, Elop believed that the company can do more.

“Maps and location experiences should inspire us to sense our world. That is what Nokia is doing,” said Elop at a Nokia mapping event in San Francisco.

Learning from what happened to Apple’s mapping “disaster” when they’ve launched Apple Maps as sole location service provider for iOS 6, Nokia will have “Here” work across multiple devices and operating systems. Nokia’s “Here” will soon be available for download in Google Play and App Store.

“Here” will work as a collective tool as it gathers data from a variety of sources including its own data-capturing cars, crowdsources databases and the users of the service themselves.

Nokia also acquired Earthmine, a California-based 3-D mapping company, to work with “Here”. Earthmine uses roving camera-equipped trucks to capture Google StreetView-like photography.

Now, Nokia is more than just a name we all know for mobile phones. The next time we hear Nokia, we can associate them as well with maps.

This post was first published at KabayanTech.