It’s still early days for GPS mobiles, in terms of figuring out exactly how mapping applications can make use of GPS combined with a mobile phone’s data connection. However, Nokia is certainly bullish about the prospects for the area, judging by comments from CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo at the company’s annual shareholder meeting: ”We expect to ship about 35 million GPS-enabled Nokia devices in 2008, which is equal to the entire GPS device market in 2007,” he said, expressing similar confidence about the company’s decision to buy navigation firm Navteq. “When we look at it with the eyes we have now, when regarding pedestrian navigation, map services, digital maps, we are even more excited about the opportunities than when making the decision.” It’s good news, since 35 million phones is a decent base for GPS-related services to target, meaning that if you own one of these handsets, chances are more developers are working on innovative applications making use of the technology. GPS and social networking is one of the areas I’m most interested in going forward, along with geotagging photos. Of course, just because you own a Nokia handset doesn’t mean you’ll want to use its GPS for Nokia’s own mapping and sharing services, so we’ll have to see how they tie in with other companies’ services (for example Google Maps and Flickr). (via Planet Cell Phone)
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