Nokia to sell HERE mapping business

[Darren]

Nokia has revealed it is considering the sale of its location services business HERE.

In a statement released by the company it said that it "believes this is the right moment to assess the position of HERE within the proposed new Nokia business."

Though the HERE brand may not be familiar to many, its former and more widely known name, NAVTEQ, will be. Nokia bought the company back in 2008 but with their departure from the mobile phone market they no longer need the mapping business which has struggled to make a profit.

Nokia have estimated the value of HERE at 2 billion EUROS, compared with the 5.7 billion Euros it paid for the company seven years ago.

Source: www.nokia.com

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Darren Griffin

[sussamb]

Nokia have been considering this for a while. HERE supply the mapping for Garmin GPS/satnavs so who takes this on, assuming Nokia can find a buyer, will hopefully continue to support Garmin
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Where there's a will ... there's a way.

[K13ehr]

As a newcomer to the Here app, it is spoiled by not having the ability to add 3rd party POIs otherwise it does seem like a very good app.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Philip]

I've not been able to find a way to import POIs into Here either, though I also quite like it as an application.

I'm not too surprised that Nokia are looking to sell Here, though. There is no direct revenue stream from it - by giving its products away for free, Google Maps/Waze really is killing off all competition in the navigation arena, and a sector which was once profitable for a number of organisations (TomTom and Garmin among them) looks increasingly vulnerable.

(As an aside, when organisations give their products names like "Here", do they realise how difficult that makes it to search the internet for them?!)
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Philip

[K13ehr]

I wonder if anyone will offer to buy the app, it does have a following, and is quite good.

As for the stupid name, TomTom seemed to have managed okay, but Here is a bit too far, scuse pun :D :D

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