Mobile is about mobility. Mobility is about location, and it can’t do without good maps.
The giant in the map data of the world is none other than Navteq, the $8.1 billion company acquired by Nokia in October 2007. When I mentioned that the money paid for is $8.1 billion USD, some people doubt if I meant million… They heard of Youtube, but not Navteq, and Youtube is only $1.65 billion.
But think about this. $8.1 billion makes sense. Maps, since centuries ago, has always been highly valued by mankind. People will even kill for a map (a treasure map of cos!). Map creators (i think of Nami in OP ^^) spend lots of time and effort just to create an accurate representation of the actual landscape. These are contents created by professional with hard work, unlike Youtube where contents are created by any Alice, Bob or Cherry..
Understanding Navteq data formats
Navteq provides different abstraction format to their data. This way, developers can choose the format they want to use, independent from the underlying data. Some of the formats:
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GDF 3.0 - ASCII format. de facto international standard
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SPF - ASCII format. Proprietary to Navteq
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RDF - Relational database format