Nokia pilots GPS-based promotions service in UAE

Nokia has chosen the UAE to pilot a location-based offers service, and claims to have signed up 50 local businesses for the scheme.

Nokia Maps Offers will provide smartphone users with offers and promotions based on their location, the handset-maker said in a statement issued today.

"The Offers service will recognise Nokia users' location automatically and display only the offers related to this location," said Tom Farrell, general manager of Nokia Lower Gulf.

The launch comes amid a craze for online "group-buying" websites in the UAE, with several discounts sites such as GroupOn, LivingSocial and Cobone having launched here.

Nokia's service, which comes pre-loaded on its latest smartphones, is being piloted in the UAE before being rolled out to other markets depending on the results, a spokesman for the company said.

Nokia said that more than 50 businesses had signed up for the service, including Shakespeare Café, Al Ansari Exchange and The Address hotel. The offers will be available only to Nokia customers, although the company could not immediately provide details of the kind of offers that will be available.

Despite the rise of group-buying sites in the UAE, Nokia's offers service more closely resembles a feature of the location-based mobile application FourSquare.

FourSquare allows users to check-in at their current location. It then offers them a list of 'specials' near to them. Businesses in the UAE have begun to use FourSquare as a promotional tool: there are, for example, 25 'specials' listed around the Dubai Media City area.