Free Ovi Maps Navigation on Nokia E72 unlikely to show on E71

Free Ovi Maps Navigation on Nokia E72 unlikely to show on E71

February 24, 2010 11 By Jakob

A few days ago @_bjorn send over an alert about this blog post, which essentially underlines my thoughts on what Nokia is doing with Ovi Maps.

There’s been speculation among users of legacy phones like the Nokia whether the recent release of Free Navigation for Nokia E72, E55, E52, N97 and mini, X6, 6730, 6710, 5800, and 5230 would also be released for other phones – like the E71.

Now, I don’t KNOW any of this, but here’s why that won’t happen:

Nokia presumably likes when their new phones get good traction. As mentioned in the blog post I link to above, Nokia is getting traction by offering a service on new devices for free, which would otherwise cost quite a bit. In this case Nokia has chosen to offer free navigation to the Nokia devices mentioned above and (currently) not on any other devices.
That will move customers in direction of a move from their current device to a new device. Some would argue that Nokia is playing a risky game as disgruntled users might choose other smartphones like the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or even Windows Mobile devices in the market currently.

So, from Nokia’s point of view: They already sold the phones that currently can’t do free navigation  – not with Ovi Maps, anyway. They made that money already. To now risk that users move from their Nokia E71 to another platform other than Nokia’s own is (almost) as bad as that users keep their current Nokia devices without making any change at all. No change at all equals no extra revenue for Nokia, so it’s better and more profitable for Nokia to risk alienating users through not offering free Ovi Maps for older devices than to put efforts in supporting users of phones that already got sold.

Or anyway, that’s one way to see it. What are your thoughts?