Nokia's Here Maps Now Offers Live Traffic Data in 50 Countries

Nokia's Here maps, which is being wooed by several companies after the Finnish firm said it is considering selling the unit, has now added few more regions under its live traffic service. The regions included are Bahrain, Bulgaria, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Romania, and bring the count up to 50 countries.

The six new additions come over the existing 44 countries already covered by the Here Maps live traffic feature. The firm say live traffic can now be accessed in the new countries via the Here Maps' Web interface besides the Android, iOS, and Windows Phone platform. Notably, besides adding more countries under its radar, Nokia has also updated its Here Maps live traffic service.

Here maps now covers reversible express lanes. "In certain metropolitan areas these types of express lanes, where the direction of the lane can change depending on, say, rush hour or congestion, Here Real Time Traffic updates the direction of traffic flow," says the company blog post.

The service now also adds traffic safety warnings, which gives an alert to the driver in advance to slow down in case of a traffic jam ahead. "With Here Real-Time Traffic, Predictive Traffic, Traffic Patterns and Analytics, Here is clearly leading the industry in advanced traffic content and services," said Tony Belkin, Director of Traffic and Dynamic Content for Here.

Last week it was reported that German carmakers like BWM, Daimler and Audi are readying an offer to buy the Nokia Here Maps business. Also in the running are consortium including Uber and Baidu, and a third group including China's Tencent and Navinfo.