It seems that Microsoft is keeping true to their word that they will continue to develop and support the Windows Mobile operating system. With the announcement of the Windows Phone 7 mobile platform last February, many believed that this year would be the last for WinMo users. Microsoft has however declared that the older OS will continue its progress alongside the newer Phone 7 OS. There were also announcements that WinMo would later be renamed as Windows Phone Classic and could possibly serve as the business-type mobile platform for MS.
Anyway, Bing Maps is the latest free smart phone based sat nav service that once again combines a nifty search engine application with an online maps service. As fun as TomTom’s latest Darth Vader voice clips are, it would be unlikely that even with the full might of the dark side; TomTom would be able to fend off Nokia, Google and Microsoft at the same time.
Smart phones have been edging close on the GPS market borders for quite some time now. While Nokia’s Ovi Maps was originally a competitor in the market, the Finnish company totally changed the rules when they announced that all Nokia smart phones with GPS would be getting free voice-guided sat nav services. This was later bolstered by Google’s announcement that they too would be providing free sat nav coverage as well, and with their technologies and services (Maps, Street View and more) it was expected that the search engine would take over the GPS industry.
Now it appears that even Microsoft wants a piece of the pie as they too are bringing in their own services. Apple and TomTom have been left in a tight bind –a bind Apple cannot move away from as the Cupertino based company is still heavily tied up to TomTom through a GPS sat nav app.
Tags: Bing, Bing-Maps, Google, Google-Maps, Microsoft