> Industrial News > News   Nokia Agrees to Purchase Navteq and Enter Digital Navigation Map Market   Nokia said it agreed to purchase navigation-software maker Navteq Corp. for $8.1 billion on Oct. 1. Chicago-based Navteq is one of the world's leaders in electronic mapping, which it licenses to makers of in-car navigation systems, Web sites and others including Nokia. Nokia, said it plans to keep using Navteq and sell the software to others. Nokia recently stepped up efforts to roll out handsets with a global-positioning-system receiver, which uses satellites to determine a user's location, speed and direction. Nokia hopes that in a few years, GPS will be as common as cameras on its phones. Comment: Nokia’s acquisition shows the key role of map providers with labor density, capital density, and technology density in the LBS industry chain. It also shows navigation and LBS services, after the blowout development, have fully expanded from the Internet, vehicles, and PNDs to mobile terminals. While the acquisition delights the winners, Google, Microsoft, and Garmin may feel a little frustrated. Garmin was once in a dilemma of buying map data from its competitor Nokia or TomTom, but its later competition against TomTom in purchasing Tele Atlas forced TomTom to pay another 900 million euroes. The competition between Google and Microsoft in terms of LBS around the world has turned white hot. Both of them have promoted LBS services in China and have chosen the same map partner, AutoNavi.   Time:2008-02-05 Source:NaviForum Shanghai News Center Relative