Vodafone is going to kill off its Wayfinder service due to competitive pressure from Nokia and Google. Here are some select quotes from Mobile Industry Review- “Due to the huge competitive pressure generated by the market entry of Nokia and the upcoming launch of Google navigation, Vodafone is proposing to close down Wayfinder…” “We could not charge for something that others gave away for free…”

Ewan over at MIR agrees with this decision, but to me it could be shortsighted. I understand that Nokia and Android phones form a large part of Vodafones sales, but what about the other phones they sell? The millions of other phones? One way to compete with free is to make your own service free and use it to drag customers through the door. It’s as good a loss leader as I can think of.

A new beta of Ovi Maps is now available (3.04) which brings a few tweaks to improve the performance and positioning. This is fast becoming one of Nokias main weapons and of course it is still free.

“We are pleased to introduce you to the new Beta release of Ovi Maps for mobile (v3.04) and have made a few tweaks to improve the performance and positioning.

Download the new Ovi MapsBeta for mobile (v3.04) from Nokia Beta Labs and please let us know what you think in the discussion forums and surveys.”

A new TomTom car holder has been launched which claims to offer the user a better view than previously. The other point to remember is the continuin debate as to whether it is legal to clip a GPS unit (or anoything else) to a windscreen- this is one solution.

“London, 19 February 2010 – TomTom today transforms in-car iPhone navigation with its latest car kit for iPhone. Designed to securely integrate iPhone into your car, this is the must-have accessory for fans of iPhone and TomTom for iPhone.

The original TomTom car kit for iPhone has a windscreen mount. The new car kit for iPhone, however, screws onto a vehicle-specific ProClip mount that is fixed on the driver’s dashboard. This lets drivers choose a permanent location that works best for them, with no need to reposition it for each journey.

“This car kit for iPhone is designed with demanding drivers in mind,” explains Tom Murray, vice president of market development. “It offers the fastest, neatest way to secure iPhone into a car. Plus they get all the features of the original TomTom car kit for iPhone, for the best in-car experience.”

The new car kit broadens the TomTom for iPhone range, with features that further improve the in-car navigation experience for iPhone users. They include a GPS booster for uninterrupted navigation – even in built-up areas. The built-in microphone allows drivers to make and answer phone calls safely while driving, whilst an integrated speaker ensures navigation instructions are always clear. These features are vital to help busy drivers get to the right place safely.

An in-car charger keeps the driver’s iPhone battery topped up while on the go – essential for staying in touch with clients and colleagues. For an even neater integration, drivers can contact their garage for a direct power connection to their car battery.

Time to unwind? The kit also comes with an audio out connector that lets drivers play their favourite music over their car stereo*. It even fades music out when receiving phone calls or navigation instructions.”

The free Nav4All navigation service is no more. The timing is interesting when we consider that Nokia just made its maps application free and the following statement has a touch of annoyance within it.

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.

Nokia has joined Google and is going to offer free navigation with its smartphones. Is this the start of a trend where navigation will be seen as a standard inclusion in a smartphone alongside PIM and email?

Espoo, Finland – Nokia has today announced plans to release a new version of Ovi Maps for its smartphones that includes high-end walk and drive navigation at no extra cost, available for download at www.nokia.com/maps. This move has the potential to nearly double the size of the current mobile navigation market. The new version of Ovi Maps includes high-end car and pedestrian navigation features, such as turn-by-turn voice guidance for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries, as well as detailed maps for more than 180 countries.

“Why have multiple devices that work that work in only one country or region? Put it all together, make it free, make it global and you almost double the potential size of the mobile navigation market ,” explained Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia. “Nokia is the only company with a mobile navigation service for both drivers and pedestrians that works across the world. Unlike the legacy car navigation manufacturers, we don’t make you buy maps for different countries or regions even if you’re only visiting for a few days. We offer both navigation and maps free of charge, with all the high-end functionality and features that people now expect.”

“The large-scale availability of free-of-charge mobile phone navigation offerings using high-quality map data will be a game changer for the navigation industry,” said Thilo Koslowski, Vice President Automotive and Vehicle ICT at Gartner. “Such offerings will accelerate mass market adoption for navigation solutions and shift innovation focus to location-based services that go beyond traditional routing benefits.”

For Nokia, removing the costs associated with navigation for drivers and pedestrians allows the company to quickly activate a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services. This is part of Nokia’s strategy to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services. The move is also in line with Nokia’s vision that the next wave of growth will be centered on the location-aware, social internet — as the ‘where’ people are doing things becomes as important as the ‘what’ they are doing.

Co-Pilot Live v8 for Windows Mobile has been updated with many new features. Full details are available at IntoMobile, but the main updates are-

Improved timing of turn instructions. Customers can now choose exactly when they would prefer to receive spoken turn instructions, based on distance or time from the turn.

Ability to download free safety camera database updates direct to CoPilot Live via mobile web or WiFi

Ability to switch-off the ‘Welcome to CoPilot Live’ message played at start-up

Support for Premium Live Services, including Live Traffic, fuel prices and Local Search (Premium Live Services are available for £19.99 for 12 months)

Support for Text-To-Speech (TTS) voice directions (TTS costs £2.99 for lifetime use)

Ability to import custom Points of Interest (POI) databases in CSV or OV2 format

Improved display support for HVGA resolution smartphones

Additional stability, memory usage and performance improvements

Sid has sent in his thoughts of the traffic service available from ALK for Co-Pilot, and he is far from impressed. This is a hard one to judge because I have driven over 8,000 miles since using it and never had one single problem. I guess no system is perfect, but it will be interesting to see what ALK responds with.

“Shaun, Hi. I listen to your thoughts daily and take a huge amount of notice of your comments. You do seem to be WAY of the mark on one topic though and I think it’d be wise to warn others.

The traffic service on CoPilot 8 on the iPhone is awful. I like CoPilot 8 and use it almost daily. I figured £18 for the traffic notice would be money well spent. Well, it wasn’t. On Monday 28th I spent 5 hours to make a trip that normally takes 1.5hrs up the M5 and M6 and CoPilot never found a single issue. On the return trip I had no problems whatsoever with traffic but CoPilot warned me of several hold-ups.

I have written to ALK to get their comments and hopefully a refund, but in the meantime I think it’d be wise to warn your readers that this service is not ready for practical use.

I hate to be negative, but I was sorely affected by my trip on the 28th. Otherwise the software is great and your site continues to be superb. Thanks, Sid.”

It seems as though the Garmin nuvifone was first announced when Psion was still going strong, but at last it is moving from myth to reality and Brighthand has posted a review of this fabled device. It would have done much better had it been released nearer to the announcement date, a lot nearer…

“Whether or not you like the Garmin nuvifone G60 entirely depends on your tech personality and what you want to get out of your phone. Your average nerd would probably take one look at the G60 and start laughing because it doesn’t play games or videos and it doesn’t have Twitter and Facebook clients along with all the other bells and whistles that today’s smartphones should have.

But your average consumer would likely have an entirely different reaction. The G60 would be perfect for folks like my mother who are relatively comfortable with technology but take a “just the facts” approach to electronics — they just want things to work, and don’t care that it can do the laundry and walk the dog for you, too. The G60 would also be a good choice for folks who are trying to simplify a bit and combine devices — perhaps you know someone who needs to stay connected, but doesn’t have a phone permanently attached to their ear; someone who would welcome the ability to have a GPS in their pocket that also serves as a phone with light e-mail and web browsing capabilities.”

The growth in Ordnance Survey GPS has recently started to build a head of steam and now the UK government has announced that the map data will be available for free online in 2010. This has the potential for so many uses it would be impossible to list them all, but some will be jumping for joy over this move. Thanks to Austin for the link.

“The UK Government has announced that Ordnance Survey map data will be freely available online to everybody from 2010.

The objective is to join the dots between what, when and in this case where and allow people to automatically link and interpret public statistics about crime, health and education by postcode, local authority or electoral boundary. This will be achieved by allowing developers to use information and stats on various subjects to be linked to OS maps to create hybrid enriched web information pages. It will able people to see all the things that are happening in a given location such as traffic accidents, speeding offences and car thefts.

According to Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, 80% of public sector data refers to a location and hence to a map…”

The announcement of Google Maps Navigation in Android 2.0 created a few ripples yesterday and there was an immediate hit on the share price of mobile navigation companies who will be competing in the same space. Thanks to Charles who found the stats here.

However, it now appears that this system may find its way to the iPhone which is something I did not expect. This quote from AppleInsider says it all- “Apple is a close partner,” a Google spokesperson told AppleInsider Wednesday. “Millions of users experience Google Maps on the iPhone. We will continue to work with Apple to bring innovation, including Latitude and Navigation, to users but you’ll have to speak to Apple about availability.”

Google has an opportunity to make the Android platform unique with this offering, but is flexing its corporate muscles by concentrating on its core business and thus it may well end up on a few different mobile platforms.

Ignore the rumour comment below about Google Maps Navigation below because it is now real, very real. Thanks to Charles for clearing that one up.

Google will introduce Google Maps Navigation in the ‘Droid from Verizon’ (which I thought was a series of devices?) and it will initially be available in the United States only. This is an interesting development and one which can only draw more people to Android, but there is a nagging feeling of control in the back of my mind. Do I want a smartphone running a Google OS which has my Google calendar and contacts loaded alongside my Google email and now my Google navigation software. That’s a lot of information about me going to one company… Having said that, this looks like an impressive development which may cause problems for some of the other smartphone GPS companies.

Here’s a demo video which was originally posted here-

Rumours abound that Google is working on a free navigation app for Android. It would be appear to be advert funded and with the success of Google Maps well in the bag, how can this idea fail?

A new review of the UK Palm Pre has been posted at Mobile Industry Review and there is little doubt that the software is the star of the show in the reviewers eyes. He has a point.

One part of the recent ChangeWave survey I forgot to mention is that over 99% of iPhone users are happy with their devices and that it is number one on buyers wish lists. These are mightily impressive stats by any measure.

BlackBerryCool has posted a video showing the typing differences between the original Storm and the Storm 2. It seems that OS5 is as much involved in the improvement as the new hardware.

HTC has released a ROM update for the Touch Diamond2 which includes tha update to Windows Mobile 6.5. Good to see so many updates coming out so quickly for the HTC range.

Jan Ole Suhr, the man behind the Gravity Twitter client, recently announced during an interview that over 90% of his revenue comes from his own website. This is not exactly the best advert for Ovi where it is also available.

Last week I had to attend a meeting in a town which happened to have two roads with the same name. I was given a postcode by my company and proceeded to drive to the meeting using Co-Pilot on my iPhone. I ended up in a residential area and promptly started to curse Co-Pilot for letting me down. This was the first time it had happened and so I was not duly concerned.

As a last resort I tried Vodafone Sat Nav on my BlackBerry Curve 8900 and was promptly taken to the correct building. I inputted the same postcode information and all worked OK this time, but that is far from the end of the story. When I arrived, it turned out that many others had also been taken to the same place I had originally because they had also used the same postcode. We all managed to get lost at one stage and eventually were told that we had been given the wrong postcode.

The irony is that all of the sat navs which did the right thing ended up getting us lost and seemingly Vodafone Sat Nav mixed up its postcodes and took me to the place I wanted to go? So, sometimes it is worth a double check before you leave to ensure that everything goes smoothly. A sat nav is only as good as the person, or people, providing the information for it to navigate with, and in this case we all got it wrong.

Robin posted on 247 about an article he had written comparing routes on the major iPhone apps available. It fits quite well with my article above and shows that there are advantages and disadvantages to every solution.

“Someone called Pakman, commented on the CoPilot vs TomTom review, that CoPilot Live is making questionable routing decisions. I requested live examples so I can do something with it.

Because I did not receive any, I decided to compare several routes with all the GPS apps on the EU market, namely Sygic, CoPilot Live, iGO My way, TomTom and Navigon.

Many articles have been written about this subject already for conventional GPS PNDs but not many about the iPhone apps.

Also I will try to visualize the logic of TomTom IQ routes.

One thing to keep in mind is that TomTom and Sygic uses the Map Technology of TeleAtlas, while the others use NAVTEQ.

I created 4 test routes.

1. A route from within the city to an outside city
2. A route from the east side of the city to the west side
3. A route from the east side of the country to the west side
4. A route from one country to another country”

eReader is in the process of being ported to the Palm Pre. A mobileread member received an email advising that it is being developed, but there is no time frame for release yet. Such a shame no one outsidethe US can buy the good books. There I go again…

RIM has announced its second quarter results and yet again they are impressive. Despite this the shares have taken a tumble because a couple of analysts feel that the threat from Apple is looming large. It’s very easy to discuss potential problems, but somehow I see RIM being able to react quite easily. When you have a user base as large as it has currently the advantages are clear. “Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2010 was $3.53 billion, up 3% from $3.42 billion in the previous quarter and up 37% from $2.58 billion in the same quarter of last year.”

The price of the TomTom Car Kit for the iPhone has finally come to light and it is pretty hefty. At $119.99 / EUR 99.99 it is expensive when you consider that the software will be sold seperately. It may well be the only solution which improves the poor iPhone GPS antenna, but it is difficult to see the value compared to a standalone unit.

I received the following email from Nokia this week- “How time flies! It will soon be a full year since you signed up for our ground breaking Comes With Music service. We hope you have enjoyed the freedom of unlimited music downloads during your first year with us.

As a big thank you, we have some great news. We’re going to give you more. We are giving you another 90 days of musical freedom at no cost at all: your membership, due to end on 24/10/2009 will be extended until 22/01/2010.

You don’t need to do a thing (except carry on downloading and listening to even more of your favourite music). It’s our gift to you. We will also be in touch with some really cool new Comes With Music devices soon. So watch this space – and enjoy!” Looks like the whole Comes with Music thing is not doing as well as expected…

If you have not heard about the CyanogenMod ‘09 scandal in the Android word, check out this post at mobility site. It is hard to know where this one is going, but it is an interesting twist for an open source platform.

i-mate is still trading. This is a bit of a shock, but it seems legit and the reasons for all of the previous news follows in a statement from the company- “As reported in the media the company has had to close its operations in Dubai after discovering that a financial fraud had been committed. This was uncovered in August 2009. Jim Morrison with the support of the bank, the auditors and employees set out to rescue the company but by September 17 this proved to be impossible. As a result the Dubai company will have to be shut down with the assistance of Dubai Internet City.

To safeguard the brand and assets of i-mate these have been acquired by a new company Hillfoot Limited which will continue to trade as i-mate with operations in Australia, Taiwan, the UK and USA. The new company will be led by Jim Morrison, Chief Executive who has committed to stay until normal trading is resumed and the financial infrastructure is established to take the business forward.. Other remaining senior management include John Bassachi, Director of Engineering, Majeed Salman, Director of Product Development.”