Is navigation Google's next mobile frontier?

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Is navigation Google's next mobile frontier?

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 27 October, 2009

READ MORE: Google | Location | Android

Navigation and location-based services are among the most important drivers of smartphone usage, and Google may be looking to dominate this market as it does search, with a free application. As with its forays into web telephony and other apps, it will be looking to disrupt the operator branded services and the paid-for offerings from specialist players. With its Maps already a fixture on phones, it will also be gunning for Nokia's Navteq unit, for which the Finn paid a huge $8.1bn in its biggest gamble on web services to date.

According to Forbes, Google is developing a free mobile navigation app to rival premium products from specialists. This would hardly be a surprise - it has been rumored as a logical next step since the search giant made Maps mobile - but could disrupt this growth business. It would offer a turn-by-turn, voice guided service, of the kind users currently pay fees of $5 or $10 a month to access, but would almost certainly be ad-supported and free to consumers, following the usual Google model and accelerating uptake in the mass market.

Google is already well aware of the high value of ads that can be targeted to a user's position, destination and preferences, such as restaurant recommendations, and runs ads in Apple's iPhone Map application, which it helped create when the two firms were still friends. The new navigation app would be another product to boost interest in Android, creating new integrated functionality for the platform - and under Google's control rather than the carrier's. Steve Andler, VP of marketing at mobile navigation firm Networks in Motion, told Forbes: "Carriers totally control what's on these devices. But if Google controls the operating system, the carriers won't be able to get rid of its services, including a navigation app."

Google recently decided to stop sourcing US map data from Tele Atlas, in favor of using its own satellite imagery and fleet of Street View cars, and is also piloting systems to gather traffic data directly from users' handsets.