2007–2013 In 2006,
Nokia purchased a German start-up, Gate5, that made a mapping software called smart2go. In February 2007, Nokia announced that smart2go would be available for free on the
S60 Symbian platform and
Windows Mobile 5.0. It was preinstalled on handsets, including
Nokia N95, which featured
Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. In August 2007 the smart2go application became part of the umbrella
Ovi brand, and version 1.0 of Nokia Maps was released for S60 3rd Edition devices. Months later, Nokia bought
Navteq, a provider of digital map systems. Ovi Maps version 2.0 went into public beta in February 2008 and was released in May. Version 3.0 was released in July 2009. Turn-by-turn navigation and traffic information originally required a subscription, but in January 2010 Nokia announced that these would be provided for free. In 2011 it became Nokia Maps. It was released for
Nokia Lumia in November 2011, coming preloaded on the devices. Further versions for the
Nokia N900 and
Nokia N9 were also released. In November 2012, Nokia rebranded Nokia Maps to HERE Maps. The rebranded version was initially released for
iOS and later in February 2013 for all
Windows Phone 8 devices. It was also released on the
Nokia Asha platform and
Firefox OS. The legacy
Symbian and
Series 40 versions continued using the old name without HERE branding. The web app, as of 2013, the offers routing support between many waypoints, city pages of over fifty popular cities showing local time and weather conditions, along with information from
Lonely Planet and suggested places, as well as 3D maps of 25 cities, including routing support. It also offers live
traffic flow visualization, public transport search, and synchronization of user's points of interest (Collections) between the website and mobile devices. Additionally, it shows
heat maps to visualize areas popular for food, nightlife, shopping and local sights in select cities, listing and managing businesses. With 3D goggles, users can get stereoscopic views of 25 cities. It also provides detailed street-level imaging for many cities.
2014–present The HERE application was first announced for
Android as a
beta test version for some
Samsung Galaxy smartphones on 29 August 2014. The app was made available for download from Samsung's Galaxy
App Store on 8 October 2014. It was simultaneously launched for the
Samsung Gear S smartwatch. The first public release of the beta Here app (across all Android platforms) was on 21 October 2014, as an
APK download from the HERE.com Web site. The app became available in the
Google Play Store on 10 December 2014. As of June 2015, the Here app was available as a free app in 118 countries and territories across the world for the Android and iOS platforms. On 3 September 2015, Here announced that its app would be available for the
Samsung Gear S2 when the smartwatch was released later that fall. In late 2015, Facebook began using HERE's maps for their applications, moving away from Microsoft's map offering, Bing. Ownership and operation of Here Maps changed in December 2015, when Here, at the time a subsidiary of Nokia, was sold to a consortium of German automotive companies (
Audi AG,
BMW AG and
Daimler AG) as Here Global BV. On 15 March 2016, HERE announced that it would discontinue support for its app for
Windows 10 Mobile on 29 March 2016 due to its use of "a workaround that will no longer be effective after June 30, 2016", and that the existing
Windows Phone 8 app would only receive critical updates after this date and no longer be actively developed. HERE Maps licensed by
Microsoft are still offered as part of the existing
Bing Maps-based software on these devices. On 27 July 2016, the app was updated and re-branded to HERE WeGo. The update and rebranding focused on navigation capabilities, including adding taxi fare information in some cities and integrating with Daimler's
Car2Go service. The other apps of the HERE suite were integrated into WeGo. In April 2020, HERE WeGo introduced
CarPlay integration for iOS. As a response to COVID-19 delivery tools demand, HERE WeGo Delivery was launched. ==Platforms and versions==