By Prarthito Maity | Mar 13, 2013 08:39 AM EDT
HTC has been in the news for a while now with the revelation of the HTC One, and now the company, as it seems, is moving ahead from just releasing smartphones to something even greater.
HTC could be set to offer its very own mapping app that would compete with Nokia’s current map offering on ground level for the new Windows Phone 8 devices, according to reports.
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As of now, Nokia is the only mobile phone company that offers its Here mapping service for all its Windows Phone-based devices, and HTC is looking to get into the same offering with a rumored app that will work the same way as the Nokia one does.
While this new feature, if true, will be a brand new offering from HTC, it has been speculated that the new feature could also be an updated version of HTC Locations that was released last year to provide some kind of a competition to other mapping services.
When HTC Locations arrived, it allowed the user to download map data for offline use from a large number of countries similar to the Nokia Drive. Locations’ GPS navigation also spoke to the user with voice prompts that would let the user know where to go even if he or she didn’t have an internet connection.
The information that HTC is actually looking into a new Locations-like navigation app for its family of Windows Phones was revealed to news Web site Windows Phone Italy that contacted “confidential sources close to the company” familiar with HTC’s plans in Taiwan.
“It's unclear whether or not this service will be developed from the ground up, or will build on top of the existing HTC Locations app, which is no longer available (for Windows Phone 8 devices). Unfortunately, the news website does not currently have details on progress made, or when we can look to see such a service launched on the platform,” WPCentral writes.
“As well as this, it's unknown whether HTC will offer the mapping service for free to compete with Nokia's HERE platform.”
As far as the new mapping service from HTC is concerned, the Italian site also stated that it was learnt that “HTC would be putting pressure on Microsoft to raise a minimum security restrictions of the operating system allowing the installation of the app, or any part thereof, in the external memory of the phone.”
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