Nokia is working hard to win back the lost market share. The first thing the company did was switching to another platform for the high-end smartphones, and as Nokia and Microsoft have come to a final agreement, there is no doubt in the nearest future we’ll see Nokia products with a new face.

But of course moving to Windows Phone isn’t that simple, as there are many other aspects that need to be improved. This time the things come to Navteq that is Nokia’s digital mapping subsidiary.

An internal memo coming from Phone Scoop says that Nokia and Navteq decided to re-organize their businesses and come together to a new project. This new deal will refer to their mapping and social networking services. So starting from May 1, Nokia’s Tero Ojanpera and Navteq CEO Larry Kaplan will begin to work on a new project that will bring changes in the following three aspects:

1. New social-location applications, services and developer experiences to build a winning brand and ecosystem together with Microsoft
2. High-value location content enabling differentiated experiences
3. And high-value advertising network monetizing the ecosystem by providing local commerce services for brands and merchants.

Well, this means Nokia’s social-networking services will be developing in a single organization with Navteq. They will not only develop different services for Nokia devices and the Windows Phone platform, but will provide different services to other B2B partners of Navteq.

The organizers of this project believe “they will drive the next generation of location and commerce capabilities for the entire industry.”

Navteq is Nokia’s digital mapping subsidiary, and lately announced the purchase of traffic camera tracking service, Trapster. The last has about 9.4 million users who are informed about locations of police road checks and road hazards. The Trapster app currently runs on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm phones.

The app pinpoints the current location of user via GPS or WiFi and sends them audio alerts or text messages when they are approaching a ticket threat.

According to a Navteq spokeswoman, five companies were interested in their product, and three of them were in a real war.

I guess this is not unexpected, as last month, Navteq has bought the 3D road mapping firm, PixelActive.

People really love “free” products and Ovi Maps only confirms this. In just a week, since the latest version of Ovi Maps free navigation has been released, it has already been downloaded by 1.4 million people. Perhaps in the future the application will be downloaded more actively – when gamers learn about the new Ovi Maps Racing free game.
Even Nokia did not expect that mobile navigation will have such success. By the way, a life free license became a reality thanks to the fact that Nokia acquired NAVTEQ, a company-developer of digital maps Ovi Maps.

Beginning from the next month all smartphones equipped with GPS-modules will be supplied to the market with a new preinstalled Ovi Maps application with maps of the country, applications for walking and car navigation, and access to the Michelin Guide and Lonely Planet.
Meanwhile, Nokia launched Ovi Maps Racing – free game with location. It uses real data of NAVTEQ maps: a user creates a racetrack, then selects the car and starts to play. The game itself was developed by Redlynx, requires Symbian ^ 1 (S60 5th edition) and is already available for downloading in Ovi Store (free for a limited period of time).