Ondrej Holzman Nokia may have originally had big plans for its maps, but since it is still a profit-making business for the Finnish company, it is ready to sell its maps. He is therefore now trying to generate interest from large companies such as Apple, Alibaba or Amazon.
Citing unnamed sources with the report he came Bloomberg. According to his information, several German car companies or even Facebook are also looking at Nokia's map business.
Nokia bought the mapping system called HERE in 2008 for $8,1 billion, but it has lost significant value over the years. According to the Finnish company's financial reports last year, the HERE maps were worth around $2,1 billion, and now Nokia would like to receive around $3,2 billion for them.
According to Bloomberg the first round of offers is due to end next week, but it is not yet clear who should be the favorite or who should be most interested.
Nokia wants to sell its mapping division to focus on mobile network equipment and related services. It mainly wants to compete with Huawei, which is why it agreed to buy Alcatel-Lucent for almost 16 billion euros, the largest supplier of equipment that powers mobile networks.
A number of companies could indeed be interested in Nokia's map technology. Apple, which launched its map service in 2012, could provide significant help with its own map data by purchasing HERE maps, but it is still far from as high-quality as the competition, especially Google Maps. How big and whether Apple's interest is real is not yet clear.
Apple's photo backgrounds are still pathetic, Pilsen is still black and white.
Last week I met a car in Pilsen, Karlovy Vary, similar to the one that drove for Google and recorded Streetview. This one had HERE on the side.. ;)
I am not even surprised that they want to sell Here, when it is free on many platforms.
It makes no sense. Google provides most of its services for free and certainly does not want to sell them to anyone.
Apple will buy it, but apple maps are still nothing extra and this could make their work easier