As more people discover that there are other maps out in the digital world other than Google Maps, HERE continues to improve its services by adding more countries, cities, and places to its mapping service. Today, they’ve announced a worldwide update to their Android app, even as mother company Nokia has also confirmed that they are selling the service to the automotive “Consortium” made up of some of the leading car companies in the world.
While they say that they have been making “millions of changes” to the app and that the latest one is too many to mention, they did highlight some of the most significant ones, which includes Belarus, Barcelona, and Brazil. We don’t know if it’s an alphabetical thing and that the letter Cs will follow later on. But for Belarus, they highlighted the “passionate local mapping community” as they have been able to map out 22,000 kilometers and add 11,000 more POIs just by using their HERE Map Creator.
Meanwhile, over in Spain, Barcelona has added commuter train lines (Rodalies de Barcelona) to its transit map, joining Metro and FGC lines that have previously been included already. On the other side of the Atlantic in South America, Brazil is also receiving a major HERE update, as users can now choose to download more granular maps, choosing from among the 32 smaller packages (previously, it was just 5 territories for the whole country) so the places you don’t need won’t eat up space on your phone’s sometimes limited space.
Some other minor territories that have already been added include the British Indian Ocean Territory for the India package, the Pitcairn islands for Australia/Oceania, and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands for South America. You’ll receive a notification on your Android device when it’s time to update your HERE app, if you haven’t gotten one yet. And in other news, Nokia has announced that they have sold HERE to the “Consortium”, which includes Audi AG, the BMW Group, and Daimler AG at a value of 2.9 billion Euros. This should not affect current operations, but in fact will accelerate their growth strategy, according to HERE President Sean Fernback.
