HERE, a Nokia company and global leader in mapping and location intelligence, has been selected as a key provider of location positioning services on Ubuntu mobile devices.

HERE will provide a hybrid solution integrating an A-GPS and WiFi positioning system. Although Ubuntu already features GPS-based location, GPS on its own is not sufficient to support the location services that run on the OS with a rapid and efficient location positioning capability. This fully integrated solution will also be available to the many thousands of application developers currently using Ubuntu OS on their own hardware.

The system has been designed to anonymously collect data on WiFi signal strength and local radio cells and pass this data back to a remote crowd-sourced location service. This is purely to improve the overall quality of the positioning service and is in line with Ubuntu’s policy on its use of personal data and an opt-out option will be available to all users.

Learn more about HERE maps capabilities.