The 7000 delegates to the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress being staged in Melbourne this week will be using an indoor routing and venue mapping app from German company HERE on their smartphones to find their way around the event.

A GPS — global positioning system — is only as good as its maps, and maps are only part of an overall platform that comprises time and location data, speed limits, traffic, safety cameras, points of interest, photographic or graphic representations of intersections, etc. For want of a better term, it’s the metadata that makes an average GPS great.

Location "cloud" company HERE has announced "a significant step forward in efforts to drive a global standard for vehicle-to-cloud data – which, in turn, brings the promise of automated vehicles closer to reality".

Nokia has announced the sale of its HERE digital mapping and location services business to a consortium of German car companies comprising Audi, BMW and Daimler AG. The fourth major German manufacturer Volkswagen is not part of the group.

Nokia’s HERE mapping service is one that can truly compete with Google’s maps, and reports say there’s a new bidder: Uber.

The telco networking giants will merge to create ‘an innovative leader in next-gen technology and services for an IP connected world’, closing by 1H 2016.

Nokia has signed a deal to provide its HERE maps to Samsung. The initial deal is for devices running the Tizen operating system, but an Android beta is also now available.

Nokia’s HERE mapping subsidiary has said it will acquire Medio Systems, a US company that specialises in real-time predictive analytics in mapping.

Nokia will be a very different company when it sells its handset business to Microsoft. For starters, 32,000 of its current 88,000 staff will move to Microsoft.