Nokia Here gets come-hither with iOS, Android developers

Nokia's Here, the company's lineup of mapping and navigation applications, could be expanding for iOS and Android.

Nokia posted job listings on LinkedIn last week seeking software engineers with specialties in Androidand iOS. The job postings say that the employees will "design and build advanced location-based services applications for the Android and iOS platforms."

Here apps have resided mainly on Windows Phone devices since Nokia ditched its home-grown smartphone operating system, called Symbian, back in 2011 in favor of using Microsoft's mobile OS.Here Maps, Nokia's free mapping app, was originally only available only on Lumia devices -- which run Windows Phone -- but became available to all Windows Phone devices in 2013. There is no Android version of Here Maps, and Nokia yanked the iOS version of Here Maps from the App Store last December reportedly due to changes in iOS 7.

Now that Nokia has sold off its handset division to Microsoft, however, its software side can do whatever it wants. That might mean shifting some of their attention away from Windows Phone and producing native Here apps for iOS and Android.

It's not clear from the job listings exactly what Nokia has in store for its iOS and Android apps, but rumors have been swirling for months that the company was thinking of bringing Here to other operating systems. The job listings seem to prove it.