Nokia rebrands its map service

Back in May, Nokia announced that it will start in July/August to rebrand its first Ovi services as Nokia services which basically means that each of the services under the Ovi umbrella will simply be rebranded as Nokia - with no planned disruption to the service roadmaps. Today, Nokia Germany announced that its Ovi Maps is now known as Nokia Maps. The transition from Ovi to Nokia began in July this year, with the intention of it being completed across all countries and all services by the end of 2012. It's likely that anybody buying a new Nokia smartphone or mobile phone later this year will start to see the new branding on services included within.

It's expected that Nokia made this decision after it joined Microsoft to focus on Windows Phone 7 smartphones. Ovi was very much aligned to Nokia's Symbian devices while Nokia's Windows Phone devices will use Bing services like Bing Maps. However, it's also expected that Nokia will contribute to Bing, for instance its maps coverage is far better than Bing Maps (especially here in Europe) and therefore it makes much sense to continue with a single-brand strategy under the Nokia umbrella; especially since the Nokia brand by itself is so strong and trusted while Ovi is widely unknown.

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