Nokia sells tens of millions of mobile phones every year, more than Apple sells iPods. If you think that most phones have a digital camera, they sell millions of digital cameras and mp3 players (as part of their phones) every year. Now Nokia wants to do GPS, too.

  
                     The Nokia 330 Auto Navigator

If you’ve got a Series 60 Nokia phone, a range of Bluetooth GPS devices can turn your existing Nokia into a turn-by-turn GPS mapping system today, displaying the 2D and 3D maps we’re used to seeing on everyday GPS devices.

But the smaller screen on most smartphones isn’t the best way to deliver GPS maps while you’re driving around. Nokia are trying to rectify this in two ways – one, by including GPS as standard within their next generation N95 mobile phone which will come out in Q1, 2007.

The other way is by directly entering the GPS market with their own dedicated device. And that’s exactly what they’ve done with the Nokia 330 Auto Navigation.

At first glance, it looks pretty similar to many of the GPS devices on the market. Unlike the latest Navman GPS units, there is no inbuilt camera to take photos of your destination to easily navigate back there by image alone. There’s also no word on whether on not Bluetooth’s built-in so you can use it as a speakerphone with your Bluetooth phone when driving around.

We do know that it has launched in Europe, with Europe-wide maps stored on a 2Gb memory card, able to offer turn-by-turn navigation across countries coupled with clear spoken and on-screen directions as you’d expect from any competent GPS device today.

The LCD screen is a 3.5-inch touchscreen, along with a range of controls on the right hand side of the screen. It suction caps to your windscreen as expect. 2D and 3D maps are built-in, along with day and night modes to make navigation easier at any time of the day that you’re driving.

  
           The Nokia 330 suction capped to a windscreen

The Nokia 330 can also play videos, music and display photos on its screen, giving it ‘iPod’ like capabilities, although this is also available on many competitors.

Expected to be on sale in Europe at around €360, or just under US $500, there’s no word yet on when it will appear in Australia, or if it will on sale in phone stores available on some kind of plan. Given that there is no phone contract to tie it to, this seems unlikely, so it’s probably destined for the mass retailer market.

The only thing is that there is already so much competition. Besides established players like Navman, Garmin, TomTom, Mio and Road Angel, there’s also Voxson, Uniden, Sony, LG and no doubt others on the way.

Will the Nokia 330 Auto Navigator be able to show Nokia the way to more profits? Right now, it seems perfectly competent. But with the GPS market already brimming with innovation, Nokia needs to do something special, and offer something a little bit different, and better. Even the price is effectively the same as everyone else.

I’m not convinced this version 1.0 product offers anything different to what’s already out there, save for the Nokia brand on the box. New entrants need to do something special… like Nokia have done with the N95.

If the N95’s navigation capabilities turn out to be as good or better than the Nokia 330’s, it’d be the better buy, and you’d be able to buy in on a plan from a phone store if you wanted.

Nokia… the 330 hasn’t reached Australia yet. But I’m already waiting to see what you’ll do with version 2.0. Get those engineers cracking!

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