Nokia splashes $US8.1 billion for location services leadership

Stuart Corner
Monday, 01 October 2007 17:48

IT Industry - Deals

Nokia is to acquire location based services market leader, Navteq, for approximately  $US8.1 billion in cash; a move that it claims will make it a leading global player in the fast growing location based services market.

The offer represents a 34 percent premium on Navteq's share price a month ago. "Navteq brings a number of key assets to 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...With Navteq, Nokia 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," Nokia said in a statement.
 
Navteq provides comprehensive digital map information for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. Navteq also owns Traffic.com, a web and interactive service that provides traffic information and content to consumers. The Chicago-based company was founded in 1985, generated 2006 revenues of $US582 million and has approximately 3,000 employees in 168 offices in 30 countries.

"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."

Nokia says it intends to keep Navteq's current map data business "operationally independent, but organisationally a Nokia Group company." CEO Judson Green will report directly to Kallasvuo.