Nokia has announced it is to launch its maps on iOS and Android. Nokia maps until now have only been made available to Symbian and Windows phone OS users.  These maps will also offer turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic updates. This comes as welcome news to iOS users who have recently been forced to switch from  Google maps to Apple maps,  which has received numerous amounts of complaints about its lack of accuracy and lack of detail relating to points of interest.  Android and Windows OS users will also have access to these maps while offline, which is useful when data roaming costs are high. However iOS users will not have access to these maps when they go offline, this is due to the HTML5 technology that it uses that requires an internet connection.

Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop in a statement says that “People want great maps, and with Here we can bring together Nokia’s location offering to deliver people a better way to explore, discover and share their world,” .

“Additionally, with Here we can extend our 20 years of location expertise to new devices and operating systems that reach beyond Nokia. As a result, we believe that more people benefit from and contribute to our leading mapping and location service.”

Nokia have not at yet released a date its release of its maps app on iOS and Android, but expect it soon to be arriving at your app store. If your impatient then you can access their maps via web based version.  

This news comes as Google are said to be close to releasing its maps on Apples iOS plate form.  Source  Wall Street Journal. Lets hope Apple will accept their maps in their store. I don’t see why not, because Nokia maps have been accepted.