Nokia usually isn’t in a place to talk when it comes to mobile competition — unless the target of its mockery is BlackBerry.
Apple’s maps are bad. Even Tim Cook knows this and apologized for them. Google’s maps are good, thanks to years of work, massive computing resources, and thousands of people handcorrecting map data.
But there are more than two horses in the race to create an index of the physical world. There’s a third company that’s invested billions of dollars, employs thousands of mapmakers, and even drives around its own version of Google’s mythic “Street View” cars.
That company is Nokia, the still-giant but oft-maligned Finnish mobile phone maker, which acquired the geographic information systems company Navteq back in 2007 for $8 billion. That’s only a bit less than the Nokia’s current market value of a bit less than $10 billion, which is down 93 percent since 2007. This might be bad news for the company’s shareholders, but if a certain tech giant with a massive interest in mobile content (Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo) were looking to catch up or stay even with Google, the company’s Location & Commerce unit might look like a nice acquisition they could get on the cheap (especially given that the segment lost 1.5 billion euros last year). Microsoft and Yahoo are already thick as thieves with Nokia’s mapping crew, but Apple is the company that needs the most help.
Apple has bad maps. Nokia has maps that are better than Google’s, according to Madrigal, though nobody thinks about it. Apple has enough money that an $8 billion buy wouldn’t even make them blink. So, should they?
Follow ShortFormBlog • Find us on Twitter & Facebook
» Here comes the denial: While many are suspicious of Elop’s motives, he personally denies that’s what took place. ”The obvious answer is no,” Elop said. “We made sure that the entire management team was involved in the process, and of course the board of directors of Nokia are the only ones that can make this significant of a decision about Nokia. They made that final decision on Thursday night.” For some reason, we’re guessing he had that response ready.
This photo, showing Microsoft and Nokia’s CEOs, basically explains the entire story on its own. Nokia’s Stephen Elop: Down with whatever random OS we were trying to make that won’t succeed on the market because we waited too long! Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer: Up with our in-just-before-the-wire Windows Phone 7! By the way, how sad is it that Nokia, which basically wrote the script on the modern cell phone, now has to hop in bed with Microsoft to even keep up? source
» Whiny babies on both sides: Nokia, which hasn’t exactly been doing all that great in the market lately (but created a lot of fundamental technologies for mobile devices), sued Apple over a bunch of patents last year. Then Apple countersued. Nokia then went as far as asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to halt imports of Apple products. You know, how much does suing the hell out of one another solve? Nothing.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
