Nav4All GPS navigation shut down by Navteq
Posted by: Phat^Trance in Java Applications, Press releases, Sony SE Applications
Remember the java based GPS app Nav4All? Well today they went public with some bad news regarding their GPS services Read the press release after the break…
Dear Customers,
It is with the deepest regret that we hereby notify you that the global navigation of Nav4All and the Tracking & Tracing will go offline in 3 days. The reason for the same is that the data licence agreement with Navteq (a 100% Nokia subsidiary) was not extended, in a totally unexpected manner. It is not possible to implement data from another supplier in our Nav4All systems within the short term. The Nav4All navigation system was developed for Navteq data. Nav4All has therefore been constrained to stop.
We greatly regret the fact that we have to suspend the operation of our service. With your help, we have developed Nav4All into a global product with 27.5 million users in 56 languages, in 5 years. This has made Nav4All the largest navigation supplier. This large number of users also has to do with the fact that Nav4All works on hundreds of different mobile telephones of many makes such as Blackberry, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Android, HTC, Nokia, LG, Iphone, Ipod etc.
After 5 years of testing and market development, we witnessed rapid – in fact, exponential – growth during the last two years. That growth was reported in the licence reports to Navteq. In mid-December 2009, the global coverage was extended to include the Philippines, Morocco and Kenya.
Please contact the Nav4All support desk in case you have any questions: www.nav4all.com/support. If there is any further information from Nav4All concerning the subject of this letter, the same will be published on our website: www.nav4all.com. For reasons of privacy, Nav4All does not have the email addresses of all its customers, and we therefore request you to forward this email to the maximum extent possible, in order to ensure that everyone is informed.
[Thx Peter for the tip]
Yea, readed it few days ago.. sad news. =(
This is sad news, but i think this makes sense as Nokia is giving away their navigation free for their smartphones. Eventually, they may give similar Java or other Ovi maps navigation free for lower end feature phones too.
Yeah…pretty bad news, i used it a lot on my iPhone. Hope they integrate a new system soon…
From Nokia’s point of view, it would make sens to try and eliminate a competitor (although we don’t know if it is Nokia’s fault and Nav4All wasn’t just unwilling to pay), but from a consumers point of view it would be bad. Perhaps you don’t want a Nokia or Android phone, but still like to have good navigation for your phone? I think this highlights quite nicely why we need free and _open_ map data to allow for competition and the best products to succeed independent of licensing restrictions. I hope OpenStreetMap, a wiki world map, will succeed in picking up that job. It already has very impressive coverage and if everyone just adds their own road and perhaps the next, it will very quickly be the most up-to-date and detailed map data available as can be seen in many cities already.
well…seems that S40 Nokia devices are already Maps supported. You can check the compatibility list here (http://europe.nokia.com/support/product-support/maps-support/compatibility-and-download#/default/). I hope that they will release their Ovi Maps builds on as many smartphones as possible in the upcoming weeks. I can’t wait to upgrade my N82 with the latest Ovi Maps.
Thats so cool. I love this post u write…Will email some of my friends who interested in this…Thanks.
GPS Systems have grown to be even better each day – it is just simply unbelievable precisely what know-how can create now!
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