The company’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said “We expect to ship about 35 million GPS-enabled Nokia devices in 2008, which is equal to the entire GPS device market in 2007.”

No doubt the company's plans are to support the hefty $8 billion acquisition of Navteq and the best way to do that is to ship devices that utilize Navteq's data and solutions.

Nokia already has several GPS-enabled  devices including the  6110 and 6210 Navigators, N82, and the popular N95 and N95 8GB - now available in North America. Nokia's launch of several high-end GPS enabled devices , the Navteq acquisition and the online maps service via Ovi - see www.ovi.com - are all small pieces of a much larger puzzle that may pay off big time one day!

OF note, Nokia Labs has recently updated Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta and according to the Labs "2.0 beta is getting close to graduate". Also, just accounced by the labs to support GPS-enabled devices, a new application that apparently builds on the success of Nokia Sports Tracker, enter Nokia Step counter Beta, designed to keep track of how much a user walks or runs in a day. From the Labs... "it counts the number of steps you take by analyzing how you ’shake’ your phone. Since most people have their phone with them everywhere they go, it is natural to use the accelerometer in an S60 product to track your daily activity." See also http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/stepcounter