In an interview with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, it was learnt that Bingo maps will be having Nokia’s branding stamped over them in the coming time. Irrespective of which handset you access the Bingo maps from, you will always see a branding stamp of Nokia over them. RIM has made it clear that Bingo maps will be used by them over Blackberry smartphones. So, this, in a way, promotes Windows phone OEM for free and by hands of its competitors.

“You’ll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map that you get from Microsoft properties over a period of time. Even if you are on a BlackBerry device, who recently said they were going to start using Bing Maps.”

It is also certain that the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft will be up there for a longer period of time. This is because of the more work that the Finnish handset maker has in store for the software giant. Here’s what Elop said:

“In the time ahead, what you will see is, across all the Microsoft properties including Bing maps, more and more work will be done by Nokia. We did that for important reasons as we had the better mapping assets so it made sense. But it also creates some balance in the relationship with Microsoft.”

Nokia has been helping Microsoft in improving its navigation services so as to protect themselves. This was to make sure that the cotract isn’t just one-sided.
Nokia has already provided a helping hand to Microsoft for its Bing Streetside(analogues to Google street view). Thus, it will be a fascinating watch to see how the two big giants work in 2012 in terms of collaboration of products.

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