Vodafone Quietly Kills Paid for Wayfinder Navigation Service

Telecom firm Vodafone has announced that the company will soon scrap its mobile GPS navigation paid service, spawned from the acquisition of Wayfinder, after it failed to take-off due to competition from Nokia's in-built navigation system and Google Maps.

Vodafone which incidentally is the world's largest telecom company, said in a statement that the business model had failed to take the course desired by the company. 

The mobile operator had started big, by acquiring Sweden based Wayfinder, which developed navigation and location based services, for a massive 26 million Euro back in January 2009.

Commenting on the company's decision to bring down the shutters on the navigation unit, a Vodafone spokesperson said in a statement that “In the last six months or so the business model for providing navigation services to consumers has changed dramatically. So it no longer made commercial sense to have it as a paid for service.”

According to reports, the company is now looking for new partners to work with, in order to develop free-to-use navigation services for its very own Vodafone 360 social networking platform.

As of now, Tele Atlas is partnering with Vodafone for developing navigation services for the company which interestingly plans to put together navigation technology with an address book in order to offer a complete set of navigation services.