Late last month, since Nokia has publicized that the Ovi Maps with Navigation would be free for anyone with a supported handset, over 1.4 million downloads of the application has been recorded, with the 1 millionth download passed in the first week. Nokia sees the large number of users as a growing market for third party location-based services developers. Countries including China, Italy, U.K., Germany, and Spain were the top 5 among those who have downloaded the app. Reports have it that the downloads from the aforementioned countries were done mainly for units like Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the N97 mini, N97, 5230, and the E72.

Mozilla announces that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. Starting today, Nokia N900 owners can enjoy many of the same Firefox features they know and love on the desktop on their mobile device. Firefox for mobile provides a platform for developers to create rich applications. Developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to improve, modify and customize the browser. Users can download and learn more by visiting Firefox.com/mobile. Visit the FAQ for more information.

Nokia announced that its net sales of EUR $12 billion (U.S. $16.79 billion) for the 4th quarter were down by 5.3 percent year-over-year. Nokia’s CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said “We grew our market share in smartphones in the fourth quarter, driven by the successful launch of new touch and QWERTY models. Our performance in smartphones, combined with continuing success in the emerging markets, helped us increase sales in our Devices & Services unit, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.”

IDC, a research firm, said that due to Nokia’s universal power, Symbian will hold its place as the most used smartphone operating system through 2013. Nonetheless, Android will witness a large amount of growth internationally, and IDC expects its global shipments to reach 68 million units by 2013, second to Symbian. The company says global smartphone sales will exceed 390 million units sold during its 2009-2013 forecast period. IDC sees restricted global marketshare escalation for both the Linux and webOS platforms.

Nokia produced a competition called the “Nokia PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA” , the second N900 competition, which calls on hackers to mod the N900. The final three chosen projects will be something more interesting, like a remote control, or the brain for a robot. Hackers will be able to exhibit their ideas in Las Vegas for an opportunity to win prizes between $3,000 and $10,000. The last competition had a small number of distinctive entries including one that created etch-a-sketch images from photographs. To enter, visit Nokia’s Push N900 Web site.