Feature extracts:
The Nokia Maps story starts over two years ago, with the purchase of German navigation specialists Smart2Go. They were a very minor player in the overall market, but Nokia has taken the product, heavily revamped and extended it and, most importantly, is pushing it for 'free' with every one of the ten million smartphones they sell in each quarter. Nokia has even announced an upcoming Series 40 version, meaning that Maps will be available on every other Nokia phone, too, taking the market for Maps into the hundreds of millions. An impressive opportunity all round.
Smart2Go, or Maps 1.0, has been used by myself and others for almost a year now and is quite well known. The business model is sound, with basic route calculation and junction-stepping for free, but with voice guidance and real time GPS tracking a paid-for extra, on a per day/week/month basis. It's a system that works well and I take advantage of it whenever I'm off on a short trip, paying by the week. The main minus points about Maps 1.x have been its inconsistent routing (though later versions seemed better, anecdotally) and its sometimes confusing interface.
Maps 2.0 seems to be a complete rewrite of the product and, like most things with Nokia (and indeed with the computer world in general) is a case of four steps forward and one step back.