NEW YORK (AFP) - Yahoo And Nokia team up on maps and web services – but will really they be able to beat Google and Apple?

• Nokia shakes up management
• Mobile broadband to access Internet to boom

Nokia will supply maps and navigation services to Yahoo! and the Web company will provide email and chat to the world's top mobile phone maker under a news partnership.

The move has been seen as a bid to regain an edge in crucial services that has been lost – and to challenge search giant Google and Apple. Today the main competition within smartphone innovation is focused on Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iPhone. Both Nokia and Yahoo are under fire for being outmanoeuvred by its rivals.

The partnership was instantly slammed as fragile, uninteresting and likely to fail.

"It's two companies that have both lost a lot of relevance in their relative spaces that are both looking to reclaim that. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot here to indicate how they're going to do that", Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst at Altimeter Group in California, told the Guardian.

"Both companies are too big to ignore, but sadly, even with the partnership, it seems like both are still falling behind. If its any consolation, at least they will have company", tech blog Wired wrote.

"When's the last time you've heard anyone get excited about anything on the way from Nokia? Or Yahoo?", PC World wrote wth the headline"Nokia and Yahoo Team Up: Does Anyone Care?".

Yahoo! chief executive Carol Bartz and Nokia CEO Oli-Pekka Kallasvuo said the co-branded services would be available starting from the second half of 2010 and globally in 2011.

As part of the "strategic alliance," terms of which were not disclosed, Nokia will be the exclusive global provider of Yahoo!'s map and navigation services, while its "Ovi Maps" will be integrated across Yahoo! properties.

"We're definitely behind on maps," Bartz said at a launch event here with Kallasvuo. "We just didn't put the engineering power on it that we should have three years ago.

"We believe Nokia's strength and continued investment in maps and navigation will greatly enhance our existing products, enabling us to focus on areas that are core to our business," she added.

Bartz said "location has just become such a big part of everything" and Yahoo! is pleased to have a partner ready to "substantially invest in that area."

"Location is a new dimension of the Internet," added Kallasvuo.

The agreement calls for Yahoo! to be the global provider of Nokia's "Ovi Mail" and "Ovi Chat" services.

"Yahoo!'s online expertise will bring exciting mail and messaging enhancements to millions of Ovi Mail customers across almost every country around the world," Kallasvuo said.

Finland's Nokia is the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer, turning out some 400 million devices a year, while Yahoo! websites welcome more than 600 million users a month.