Results have been released today from a study into mobile navigation and location-based services. Close to 3,200 people were interviewed in Europe for this survey, with another 600 in Russia. The study found that an overwhelming majority of people regard Nokia as being the best for mobile navigation.
Importantly, the research from Frost & Sullivan was into customer perceptions of these services. The survey was just as interested in finding the opinions of people who don’t use GPS, navigation or LBS as those who do. The idea was to gain an overall impression of how consumers view location-based services.
62% of Europeans people who DON’T own a GPS-enabled phone yet consider Nokia the best brand. That figure rose to 77% in Russia. Over 72% of Europeans who currently use mobile navigation gave Nokia the number 1 postition. That was 81% in Russia.
From the release:
“Nokia has clearly excelled in identifying growth opportunities in a maturing mobile handset market by integrating GPS in a large number of its handsets, making them navigation-ready. With a target of enabling a majority of its new devices with the GPS feature by 2010, coupled with the acquisition of mapping and software companies like NAVTEQ and gate5, the company is clearly building a strong presence in the mobile navigation markets in Europe and elsewhere,” comments N. Praveen Chandrasekar, Program Manager, Telematics and Infotainment at Frost & Sullivan. “This vertical integration strategy along with its position as the leading handset vendor puts the company in a good position to meet the needs of people both already using and considering mobile handset-based navigation systems.”
What we think?
I really don’t think that 600 people is enough to count as being representative for Russia. Recent estimates do put the Russian population at almost 150 million, after all. Whether or which, this story is interesting to me because of digital mapping company NAVTEQ. Nokia bought NAVTEQ last year, and it has been looking like one its smartest purchases. Vodafone has copied NAVTEQ behavior, and Samsung has gone to Nokia for mapping information from the subsidiary. It also gave Nokia the data it needed for the Ovi Map service.
