Yesterday Microsoft announced it will improve traffic coverage in the company"s official Windows Phone maps service, currently powered by Bing. The improved traffic coverage will come from Bing and Nokia, who have been collaborating on the project.
Scott Borton, Maps program manager at Microsoft, penned a blog post revealing the new traffic coverage improvements. The primary improvement of the coverage will be the ability to view expanded traffic coverage on more highways and secondary streets, Borton wrote. Borton also provided before-and-after screenshots of the improved service, which show a larger number of secondary streets being included in traffic coverage for the service.
Traffic data will also soon be included for select cities in the following countries, according to Borton: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. A traffic option should become available to Windows Phone users in the aforementioned countries in the coming weeks.
The inclusion of Nokia in the upgraded traffic coverage comes as no surprise; yesterday the company announced it will "invest in location-based services as an area of competitive differentiation for Nokia products and extend its location-based platform to new industries." It"s also been rumored Nokia will take over the maps service from Bing in Windows Phone 8, creating a new 3D maps service for Microsoft"s new mobile operating system.
Source: Windows Phone Blog | Images via Microsoft