German car manufacturers close to buying Nokia's HERE

Darren

A number of sources are reporting that a trio of german car manufactures are close to completing a deal to acquire Nokia's HERE mapping service.

Audi, BMW and Mercedes Benz are said to be behind the purchase with a rumoured sale price of €2.5 billion. That would make a loss of over €5.5 billion on the price Nokia paid when they bought the mapping company Navteq in 2007.

Nokia's fortunes have taken a tumble in recent years, Nokia have explained the sale by stating they wish to focus on their infrastructure business which has also had a turbulent time in recent years.

The news is likely to cause some concern to TomTom who are hoping increased sales to automotive manufacturers with factory fit solutions employing TomTom maps and software will compensate for declining sales in PNDs. Garmin also have always used Navteq/Nokia map data in their devices, how they view the sale of their chosen map data company remains to be seen.

Source: Nokia.com

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Darren Griffin

rkm_hm · Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 12:33 pm Post subject:

Anyone care to speculate on what the effect will be for those who are currently using the free Here app?
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Roger
TomTom via135

Satmap Active 10+ v1.50 with full UK 1:50k map and 1:25k/1:10k County maps of Hampshire & Warwickshire

idontspeed · Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2015 5:53 pm Post subject:

Lets hope they dont turn it into a subscription based service or make it chargeable to download the maps. The unique thing about their sat-nav app is that it is free & works as good as a paid app or PND.

rkm_hm · Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:28 pm Post subject:

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