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What’s The Future Of NAVTEQ Post-Nokia Acquisition?

by Justin

NAVTEQ CEO Judson Green

The European Commission is widely expected to approve Nokia’s $8.1 billion acquisition of NAVTEQ come its decision deadline August 8, especially after it approved TomTom’s takeover of TeleAtlas.  Assuming that the deal goes through, what does that mean exactly for NAVTEQ?  First of all, the publicly traded company will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary and will keep on Judson Green, its current CEO.  Second of all, look NAVTEQ to expand exponentially as they tap into 1 billion Nokia customers for geographic information, a big improvement on the 1000 mobile analysts NAVTEQ employs to drive around and record every piece of geographical info they can.  Once the company has access to Nokia’s customer base, they’ll basically a billion customers doing the work of analysts for free.  And this’ll happen in countries such as China and India, highly penetrated by mobile devices and areas where NAVTEQ badly wants to enter.

While the company’s heritage firmly lies within the automotive sector, the future is all pedestrians.  CEO Green says that cell phones could be used for tracking historical speeds, just by recording how fast a mobile phone is moving in a particular area, at a particular time.  Nokia will also give NAVTEQ a fair amount of flexibility in its decision making, conceding the fact that the mapping business isn’t their thing, and Green says that he expects NAVTEQ will have much more room to aggressively invest relieved of its pressure to meet quarterly earnings forecasts.

Look for the company to also begin working on more dynamic content such as real-time gas prices and even parking.  And because they’ll face niche competitors in some of these areas, look for the company to possible look at some smaller acquisitions itself.  If it’s location-based, look for us to be involved, says CEO Green.

via chicago tribune

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1 comment

1 Nokia Gets Approval To Purchase NAVTEQ, Looks To Battle Google | GPS Obsessed { 07.03.08 at 12:48 pm }

[...] for Nokia’s planned purchase of NAVTEQ to officially go through in the next week or so after the $8.1 billion deal received unconditional [...]

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