In a brick building in central Berlin, Nokia runs a development center where engineers are adapting personal navigation software to its advanced line of cell phones. The company is trying to turn global positioning satellite technology into revenue-generating, location-based services like mapping and, eventually, friend-finder guides.

The first service to come from Nokia’s Berlin center is Nokia Maps, a GPS navigator that has a monthly cost of euro 9.99, or about $15.60, in Western Europe and guides users with step-by-step voice commands. To direct Nokia handset owners to the service, Nokia has built a committed button into the keypad of its Series 60 line of smart phones that connects users to Ovi, Nokia’s Net portal, where its mapping service is sold.

But Germany’s largest wireless operator, T-Mobile, is refusing to sell Nokia handsets with committed Ovi buttons in Germany considering it doesn’t want to disadvantage its own navigation service, NaviGate, which charges 99 cents per route.

The companies are fighting by what is today a small piece of

the GPS pie: navigation by cell phone. Although 50 million GPS-enabled devices were sold globally last year, according to Telematics Research Group in Minnetonka, Minnesota, most were for cars, not phones.

In GPS devices, Nokia’s 5 million in sales trailed TomTom, based in Amsterdam, and Garmin, based in Olathe, Kansas, which together sold 17 million GPS auto navigation devices last year, according to Telematics.

But Telematics predicts that by 2015, satellite tracking will migrate to mobile phones and Nokia will be the market leader, making 180 million GPS-enabled handsets annually, or 36 percent of 500 million units to be sold that year.

Nokia is investing heavily to manufacture mobile GPS a success. Its $8.1 billion purchase last October of Navteq, a U.S. digital map maker, is under review by the European Commission, which expressed concerns that Navteq would…

Original post by Chris Davies

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