Archives for June 24, 2011

You would hardly know it but Nokia owns Navteq and has for some time now. The Finnish device maker, seen by many as fledgling and gasping for air, is apparently now looking at rolling Navteq into the fold and hoping that LBS may result in LB$. FYI, let it be known that I am hardly one of those who believes that Nokia is failing or going under. Rather, I feel that the company is struggling to catch up in the lucrative smartphone market, this the result of being pretty much blown out of the water in North America by the likes of RIM, the Android and iOS markets. This has resulted in a widespread attitude in America that Nokia is going down. Keep in mind though that the World is a very big place and there is much more to the mobile ecosystem than the smartphone user (think India, Indonesia, China, Vietnam etc…).

I’ve often wondered though why it has never been very visible that Nokia does in fact own data provider Navteq. Unless you happen to follow the industry or read the news you likely would have no idea. However, it appears that in Nokia’s most recent re-branding efforts that could change. the company is removing the Ovi branding from apps and services with the likes of Ovi store to be replaced by the Nokia Store or Marketplace, Ovi Maps to be Nokia Maps etc… Of particular interest, with Nokia S40 devices maturing rapidly, these traditional “lower end” devices are rapidly catching up to smartphones in features, style, connectivity and usability, however, they remain low in price and very attractive for markets where there’s tremendous potential, including Nokia’s goal to connect the next 1 billion users to the Internet. Of particular interest I think is that new S40 devices from Nokia (like the Nokia C2-03) also boast the ability to take advantage of location provisioning enabling users to take advantage of local content and location aware apps and services – enter Navteq once again! Also of interest, Maps and location are coming to S40 device users with embedded offline Nokia maps that will also include locally relevant content. Something else to consider is that in markets outside of Europe and North America, Nokia has had tremendous success with operators and with carrier billing. Consider also that currently, Ovi store boasts 6 million downloads per day and Operator billing is in place with  121 operators in 42 markets – according to Nokia when operator billing is provided to the user the result is 5X greater revenues and uptake by users… kaching! Perhaps now you see where I’m heading with this… interesting to note, just this week an article appeared on Reuters and looked at Nokia and Navteq and discussed the recent appointment of Michael Halbherr to lead a new location & commerce business.

[Read more…] about Is Nokia Reeling in Navteq and Comments on the Nokia Ecosystem