Friday, November 9, 2007

Nokia boosts LBS play with NAVTEQ buyout

Nokia’s acquisition juggernaut continues with a deal to purchase NAVTEQ for around $8.1 billion to boost its location-based services portfolio.
NAVTEQ provides digital map information for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions.

It also owns Traffic.com, a web and interactive service that provides traffic information and content to consumers.

Nokia says that NAVTEQ brings a number of key assets to Nokia: navigation industry expertise, a strong customer base and a map data and technology platform with broad geographical coverage.

Nokia plans to leverage all of that to fortify its Nokia Maps app on the GPS-enabled N95 handset.

”Location based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia’s Internet services strategy,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President and CEO of Nokia in a statement. ”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.”

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