German navigation provider NAVIGON is announcing today the fifth version to their iPhone navigation software (available in Spring) adding in-app connection to Facebook and Twitter, 3D terrain views and personalized route delivery.

The connection to Facebook and Twitter allows with a simple icon tap to post users current position, destination, and ETA without navigation interruption. NAVIGON MyRoutes, a feature that has been previously available to high end NAVIGON PNDs, analyzes driving habits, patterns, location, time/day and provides up to three routes clearly displayed in-map with ETA, distance and driving times for each.

The 3D in-map views, obtained from free NASA’s height and terrain data (from the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission), enable intuitive orientation of surrounding environment, and what lies ahead with digital landscape elevations, shadows, and geographic images. Panorama View 3D is integrated in-map, independent from the phone’s data connection. This feature will be available via an In App Purchase. Pricing has not been defined yet.

With this future release NAVIGON shows a way to compensate price drops in the iPhone navigation space in adding in-app purchases of some new features. In the United Kingdom postcode navigation is an add on (GBP 0.59) as well as traffic in the US ($19.99) and the upcoming 3D terrain view.

NAVIGON seems to have well assimilated the rules of the App Store: innovation, regular updates and monetization through in-app purchases. In comparison its main competitor TomTom (despite its much bigger brand) is only playing with price reduction to stay ahead in the race.