[balenax]

Just bought my Q10 yesterday, verry happy about it. I installed apps, sideloaded what else I needed, all went fine, very pleased with the new gadget. But today I wanted to try out the maps.... I don't really think it's fair to the users in central-eastern Europe, and not only, for the ones travelling here. I don't even get this limitation, since I think tom tom has the area covere, not totally great, but at least major cities/ roads.



Posted via CB10

[jaunty_mellifluous]

BB should go with google maps. i dont know what the big deal is!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

[Omnitech]

BB should go with google maps. i dont know what the big deal is!

The big deal is:

1. Google isn't interested in developing for platforms unless they have a LOT of users
2. Google is a direct competitor (Android) of Blackberry, which makes it even less likely they will make an effort to enhance this platform
3. Google makes most of their money from advertising, putting their mapping product on BB10 deprives Blackberry of revenue and hands it to Google

There have been several people who have noted that the BB10 mapping app does not cover Eastern Europe. As balenax mentioned, TomTom certainly has mapping data for that area, and given that the BB10 mapping app derives its mapping data from TomTom, you would THINK that they would have that available.

My GUESS is that since the userbase of BB10 in Eastern Europe is very small, Blackberry decided not to purchase a license from TomTom for its map data for that area of the world yet.

However - there are several mapping apps in Blackberry World that DO have map data available for that part of the world - you may want to take a look at some of the ones with high ratings and see if they might do the job for you.

[balenax]

I agree, not that big user base in EE. But we are a decent number of users. And how can one expect to get people onboard if you don't offer stuff to be on par with competition? I mean nokia has their maps ( offline, and very good for the area), android comes wth great maps too, ios has maps too ( not that great, but you get the job done). BlackBerry comes with no maps. I don't complain for myself, I bought Mireo and is great, I have google maps sideloaded, and is great. But I think having maps too would be another good selling point, specially for a new user.

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

There are many things that would be "nice to have", but many of them cost a lot of money.

Blackberry has limited resources compared to companies like Apple and Google (two of the most profitable companies in the world), and has to weigh the cost/benefit of expenditures carefully. If their current userbase in EE is extremely small (which it is), I could understand conserving funds to focus on areas where they will get a much greater return on investment, for now.

Personally I think the existence of 3rd-party alternatives like Mireo blunts the impact of that quite a bit. If there were no 3rd-party alternatives at all, the issue would be much more of a problem.