Nokia Has Better Maps Than Apple and Maybe Even Google

That said, I've also found multiple cases where Apple is better: e.g. around here there's a diner chain with 5 locations. Searching for their name with Google Maps on iOS 5 or maps.google.com will show only one hit 20 miles away for their business office. iOS correctly finds the actual restaurants and the first hit is the one 5 miles away.

From my perspective, it felt like Google Maps got much worse about a year ago – but mostly on mobile.

I can count the number of times the search actually picked up on the fact that I entered an address on a single hand. Apple, this is me trying to make things as easy for your craptastic search as possible. I've taken the trouble to type the number and the street name. If you can't take it from there, what the hell.

I've also had the map place things in hilariously wrong places. These are shops with addresses (addresses that are correct on the detail pane!) that would somehow end up a block away or on the wrong side of the street. Worse yet, I've been redirect to a few no-longer-existent Starbucks by now.

This is in Manhattan too, far from an obscure location.

http://maps.nokia.com/52.492296,13.4478423,19.02,359.97,0,3d...

https://maps.google.de/maps?q=Kiefholzstr.+9,+Berlin&hl=...

Notice how in the Google maps version the building that's bottom-center appears to be large and 3D, whereas my building seems small. In practice they're about the same height -- both 5 story apartment buildings.

Edit: There's a webgl version here: http://maps3d.svc.nokia.com/webgl/

Unfortunately, ruling the low-end is a bad place to be in IT, especially in the fashion-influenced mass-consumer space. No wonder they're trying hard to be acquired at the moment.

Considering that Nokia paid $ 8.1 billion for Navteq, they really need to make money with that.

A few years ago, Google used licensed data from Navteq. But I don't know if that's the case anymore.

Looking at the ToS in maps.google.com, there's no trace of Navteq anymore, but there's mention of them in localized versions of Google Maps. As an example:

UK: http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/help/terms_maps.html

Canada: http://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/help/terms_maps.html

Argentina: http://www.google.com/intl/es_ar/help/terms_maps.html

Navteq is still there, but maybe, it's just that they forgot to update the ToS (Lazy lawyers?).

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[1] http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/NAVTEQ-1-Billion-Sales-in-201...

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/amazon_google_map_bm...

[2]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/01/nokia_oracle_maps_de...

Navteq still do license map data. But it's not as profitable as all that; IIRC they weren't breaking even when Nokia took them over. This seems fairly common in that industry; Ordnance Survey (who aren't fully commercial, but the same concept applies) are heavily supplemented by public money, for example. It's presumably even more expensive to do all the capture for Street View type data.

> Alternatively, how much could be made by creating a map application for the major mobile platforms, and sell it to the consumer direct?

That seems like a pretty good idea to me, although I doubt it's going to dig them out of a €1.5bn hole. Still, Nokia don't have a lot to lose at this point, although I feel like they're still in denial about their recent lack of competitiveness in smartphones.

Oh, and they were focusing on features, not the accuracy of the map data – which they also did not test in any particularly systematic way.

This article doesn’t tell you at all whether or not Nokia's map data is better or worse than Google’s. It can’t because it doesn’t want to.

Since I don't want to buy Lumia phone when there will be no Symbians anymore I hope Android will have proper offline maps or EU will force reasonable price for data connection across Europe (what it actually does gradually).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611625