Nokia behind on satnav usage

HELSINKI, FINLAND: Nokia's satnav-enabled phone customers are not yet using their free application enough to compete effectively with traditional providers for advertising revenue, data from a rival shows.

Telmap, Europe's largest independent navigation software firm, said on Monday it remained ahead of Nokia in terms of usage of its software even though the world's top cellphone maker has a much larger user base.

Telmap's 1.7 million clients drive a total of 5.7 million kilometres a day, the privately-held company said in its first quarterly usage data report.

That compares with only 2.5 million kilometres a day in total for Nokia's 33 million users, according to researcher Canalys.

Nokia rolled out in January 2010 a free navigation offering for all its smartphones in an attack on the traditional navigation sector, but Monday's Telmap data shows how far it has to go create similar usage level and be able to command advertising revenue from local traders and business services on the devices.

"Nokia has many users for its solution, but it needs to continue marketing it and making improvements to get its customers using it more regularly," said Canalys analyst Tim Shepherd.

The active usage gives service providers data on traffic and roads -- enabling them to improve the product, sell advertising, or offer additional services like traffic jam warnings.

"We are very encouraged by these figures, especially when looking into future advertising opportunities that require a high level of engagement from users," Telmap said.

Turn-by-turn navigation offerings from Google and Nokia have made free navigation a standard in the industry. This forces providers to look to advertising and to the sale of service to phone operators to make money, but Telmap remains upbeat about the sector's prospects.

"I don't think that Nokia and Google destroyed the industry. The amount of money that is actually flowing in an out the industry is becoming bigger and bigger," Chief Executive Oren Nissim told Reuters in a recent interview.

In response to free offerings, Telmap is changing its business model to focus on selling the service to operators -- including France Telecom , Vodafone , Vodacom, Telefonica and MTS -- to stay competitive.

UK-based Science Navigation Group has owned Telmap since founding it 10 years ago.

A Nokia executive was relaxed about the data.

"For Nokia, navigation is much more than driving from A to B," said Tuula Rytila-Uotila, Vice President Location, Services.

"Nokia will deliver an ... experience that sees location as a core element of the mobile experience and will include social location functionality like check-ins, seamless connections into popular location-based applications and help people discover unique content, places and people."