Yesterday Nokia officially announced to buy NAVTEQ. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of both the companies and is subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals and NAVTEQ shareholders’ approval.
NAVTEQ is a leading provider of comprehensive digital map information for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions.
Thus, the acquisition of such a company will give Nokia a great team with best-in-world maps and navigation industry expertise, a strong customer base and an industry-leading map data and technology platform with the broadest geographical coverage.
The mobile giant said that with NAVTEQ, it will further strengthen its location based services offering and bring to market the most innovative, context aware Nokia Internet services with accelerated time to market.
“Location based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia’s Internet services strategy. The acquisition of NAVTEQ is another step toward Nokia becoming a leading player in this space,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President and CEO, Nokia. “By joining forces with NAVTEQ, we will be able to bring context and geographical information to a number of our Internet services with accelerated time to market. We also look forward to maintaining and enhancing the services and support provided to NAVTEQ’s existing and future customers”.
Currently Nokia’s GPS-enabled N95 uses licensed maps combined with custom navigation software.
Such a step by Nokia is not only a business move, but also indicates the plan of developing other phones with GPS capabilities. Or does it wish to come in main line GPS industry. Time will decide it. For now, Nokia has said that it will close the deal in the first quarter of 2008.
