Don't panic - Nokia has been looking to get rid of its HERE teams for a while, and the nightmare scenario was that HERE would be swallowed up by, for example, someone like Apple, leading to possible disruptions to the flow of map data updates. Happily, HERE has now been sold to a consortium of German carmakers - Audi, BMW and Daimler and there's no reason why business, for smartphone users, shouldn't carry on as usual.

From the HERE announcement:

In a world where more and more vehicles and devices are connected, maps and location technologies play a key role. That’s why the consortium wants HERE to continue to serve existing and future customers in the spaces, as we have been doing for many years. Consortium members will have three, separate roles: as investors, customers and suppliers of data. Their goal is for HERE to create value for customers, employees and shareholders.

A powerful location platform for all

All carmakers are working toward providing amazing, new connected services, and only by collaborating and sharing data can we reach the critical mass to make real-time map updates a reality. No single carmaker can do it by themselves.

Furthermore, a map is not only about representing the world with the highest accuracy. The advantage of digital maps over their paper counterparts is not only that they can be viewed on a screen. Modern devices know where they are, thanks to GPS, and they can navigate you wherever you want to go, and even analyze traffic or commerce data to help businesses assess where best to open their next shop. All this, and many more applications, are our business, and we call it location intelligence.

You get the idea. In practice, nothing much need change for smartphone users around the world relying on HERE Maps/Drive data and applications.

This being posted on AAS and AAWP:

• For Symbian users, we might even see the occasional data update - heck, we saw one only a few months ago.
• For Windows Phone users, map updates for Windows Phone 8.1 should continue, with Windows 10 using its Microsoft mapping client with data licensed from HERE and this too should be updated regularly - and, indeed, automatically.