Nokia Conversations has written a response to the news that Nokia Maps and Drive will no longer be exclusive to Nokia devices with the advent of Windows Phone 8. The blog post argues that Nokia can still differentiate with location based services. This might seem like a contradiction in terms, however, the post tries to make clear that Nokia is not even trying to differentiate at the application level, but instead, the company is differentiating itself at the platform level with its Where Platform. Where is at the core of what Microsoft was referring to during the Windows Phone Developer Summit when it said that developers would be able to access the mapping platforms in their application.

Rather than differentiating, I would argue that Nokia is making itself indispensable in a key area that is set to become an ever more expected part of smartphone functionality – i.e. location services. There's great business potential here with recommendation services and advertising being just two obvious ways in which business can benefit from adding a local context to the user experience of an app or smartphone.

By opening the location platform to the whole Windows Phone 8 ecosystem, we are differentiating Nokia as a company because we are the company most able to cover the location business on all levels. And we are promoting innovation because all Windows Phone 8 developers and manufacturers can build location-based experiences on top of our platform. As we’ve said before, success in the mobile sector today is all about platforms and ecosystems. In the case of location platforms, this is more accurate than ever, because all smartphones are nowadays equipped with GPS.