Nokia on Thursday announced plans to offer free navigational services on its smartphones as the Finnish company aims to catch up with Apple and RIM in the lucrative smartphone segment.

The navigational services will be offered under its Ovi Maps offerings and have been designed particularly for pedestrian and those travelling on cars. The maps can be downloaded from www.nokia.com/maps.

Nokia says the will be able to offer turn-by-turn voice guidance for 74 countries in 46 languages.

“We want to make using your mobile for navigation as familiar as using it to send a text or take a picture. We believe that making the best maps with voice guided navigation available for free will be the catalyst to do this,” explained Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Nokia. “Why have multiple devices that work in only one country or region?  Put it all together, make it free, make it global and you have something that is truly useful and can help you get round almost any city in the world whether you’re on foot or driving.”

According to D Shivakumar, Managing Director, Nokia India, “This is a strategic move that will be the game-changer for the industry. We believe that offering the world’s best maps with full navigation features and premium content at no extra cost will be the catalyst that drives mass market and penetration of mobile maps in India.”

Nokia is expecting that such a move to offer free navigational services will double the size of the mobile navigation market to 50 million . IT plans to earn revenues by offering location-based content and services.

“This is a game changing move.  By leveraging our NAVTEQ acquisition, and our context sensitive service offering, we can now put a complete navigation system in the palm of your hand, wherever in the world you are, whenever you need it - and at no extra cost,” continued Anssi Vanjoki. “By adding cameras at no extra cost to our phones we quickly became the biggest camera manufacturer in the world. The aim of the new Ovi Maps is to enable us to do the same for navigation.”