Microsoft has just announced that Bing now uses Nokia’s Backend Services to retrieve traffic information and Geocoding (which means mapping information based on its geo-location). Both companies have been working on this for “a lot of time” according to Microsoft, and the overall goal is to get users better information so that they can get from one place to another quickly.
It’s not like Bing Maps didn’t have traffic information before, but basically Nokia brings better coverage on the table. In addition to just having more data, Nokia also has more data in more countries, and this is arguably a critical component for any worldwide success. Anyhow, this updates launches in 24 countries today, and I’ve pasted the complete list below:
Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, United Kingdom, USA.