According to a report from Bloomberg, Nokia is targeting Apple as a potential buyer for its maps business. Nokia has recently been trying to sell its HERE Maps division due to it losing revenue. The report claims that Nokia is seeking around $3.2 billion for its maps business. Nokia first bought the mapping assets in 2008 for $8.1 billion.
In addition to Apple, Nokia is reportedly trying to sell HERE to Facebook, Baidu, Sirius XM, Amazon, and Alibaba. Beyond the fact that its HERE Maps division has been losing money, Nokia also wants to focus more on mobile network equipment to compete with companies like Huawei. Nokia last week purchased Alcatel-Lucent for 15.6 billion euros to help it create the world’s largest supplier of mobile-phone networks equipment.
Apple would use the data from HERE Maps for its own Maps apps on iOS, OS X, and in CarPlay. After a rough initial launch, Apple Maps has gradually been improving. In August 2014, Apple hired former Nokia HERE and NAVTEQ executive Torsten Krenz to join the Maps team. The company also hired an Amazon A9 VP to join its Maps team.
Apple has been using crowdsourcing to improve a lot of its Maps features, but the addition of data from Nokia HERE could improve its offering and make it a stronger competitor to Google Maps.
Earlier this year, Nokia launched its HERE mapping app on iPhone and we noted at the time that it was a true competitor to Apple Maps and Google Maps. The app is still available on the App Store for free.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
This would be great! I really like using HERE on my iPhone. I can download maps and use them offline, it shows the speed limit on each road I’m on while I’m driving and also shows my current speed. These features would be great if Apple would implement them into their own maps plus getting the data to improve Apple Maps would be great. Hope this happens
Maps from Apple also has offline use, just route from A to B while online, hop in the car and you have offline maps. I did that when travelling through Europe, it was another It Just Works moment.
The speed limit signs on the roads are easier to see while driving than watching it on an app, but to each his own I guess.
That is very different from what Here Maps offers. Here maps lets you download the entire map for whatever reason you are visiting. So even with no connection I can search for a nearby restaurant and navigate to it rather than needing WiFi. I was very impressed by the app overall.
Not only Nokia… many Apple user want it too!!!
This would be great. Apple maps is the worst. They need to deeply integrate the amazing Google Maps into iOS, or buy a decent competitor to shore up the inadequacies of apple maps.
I would disagree. I love Apple maps and have been using that since day one. If I find a place that changed contact info I can submit that and within a day they fix it. I guess it could depend on where you live.
It’s useless in NYC if you don’t drive (no public transit)
It also kind sucks in a few other ways compared to google maps. A big one to me is that it doesn’t show you what direction you are facing all the time like google maps does. You have to press the “my location” button a second time and then it orients the entire thing to which way you are facing. Doing that can be disorienting, and if you try to pan around, it pulls you out of that view. This is super annoying when you are just looking around and just want to know which general direction to walk in.
Another thing is that you can’t pan ahead while in diving directions. It pivots the map a little bit for some reason. In google maps starting to pan lets you look ahead and you can tap to go back.
Oh and of course – my favorite complaint. You can’t zoom out with one hand. Google maps lets you do it with a double tap and then drag up or down. But really a simple + and – button in the lower right would do wonders in both apps.
Maybe when iPhones get force touch they will implement it since then it could would be variable speed like it is on the new MacBooks.
Apple should definitely step up their game and compete.
C’mon Apple, do it! It’s a drop in the bucket and much needed.
$3.2 Billion is a waste, it’s not worth that much. This over valuation is what’s going to take these companies down and this is a prime example of over evaluation.
Given how important location-based services are, all the data and talent alone would be worth it.
I don’t know. It’s difficult integrating whole other teams. It’s not like they purchase this and then suddenly everything is awesome. The purchased Embark how long ago and we still don’t have public transit?
Buy it. The mantra that Apple uses of “we could have done this but we wanted to wait until we do it can be done right,” will be a flat out lie whenever they update maps. Maps hasn’t been updated since it came out, and yet Google Maps has continued to pull ahead. Google Maps is doing it right and the fact that 3(?) years later maps still doesn’t have transit directions.
Apple Maps has been updated, just not with much in the way of marquee features. Many have noted the mapping quality itself has improved, and in my view it’s more important to get that right first than to bolt dozens of new features into an application that at its core is inaccurate.
Firesale. I wouldn’t pay $3.2 Billion for that, how much revenue does that division earn and is it profitable? if it isn’t, then it’s not worth much.
The revenue of the division will be completely irrelevant to most of the targeted buyers mentioned in the article. If Apple was to buy it, or several other parties mentioned, then it’d be because Nokia has assets they want be it staff, technology or patents, and quite likely the product would be killed and merged into an existing product. At the very least, most of the parties wouldn’t be looking to sell the product stand alone, but rather use it as a value proposition for other services or operating systems they already offer (in many case for free).
Whether they have anything Apple feels is of value is the question. It’s possible Nokia is trying to start a bidding war by approaching some big players.
The main problem with Apple Maps at launch (and the biggest advantage of Google maps over its competitors) was the quantity and accuracy of its mapping/poi data (although Google has its own omissions/inaccuracies, you wouldn’t have thought it, from the reporting at the time). Apple has rightly prioritised improving its databas since, rather than adding new features, and it shows. I use Apple maps here in the UK 90% of the time with few issues. I tend to only use Google maps when searching for more obscure POIs, or just to enjoy their richer detail as I’m a map geek (I love that they name all the woods and forests in the UK). Having re-downloaded Here recently I’d say it’s a mixed bag. It has better terrain info than Apple, but similar/slightly worse POI data. Offline maps are nice when traveling abroad, but Apple could easily add this, if it prioritised it. Maybe the main reason for acquisition are the integrated public transit features (the biggest omission from Apple maps at present), but rumours suggest Apple is developing its own solution to this. I heard a while back that Nokia was mapping environments with laser scanning, which would be cool, but there’s no sign of it coming through, and, again, the rumours say Apple is doing much the same itself. I wished Apple had bought Waze, but Google got there first
Mapping is really hard, and most people take Google’s incredible efforts for granted, but Apple is making good strides – there’s no way that Google’s maps were at the level of Apple’s after less than 3 years. Granted everyone is standing on Google’s shoulders to a certain extent, but the whole reason for Apple maps existence is that Google wouldn’t share its best features (vector mapping, turn-by-turn navigation) without Apple ceding user’s private data – competition in mapping is fierce, and both Google and Apple are aware of how important it is to have their own ecosystem. Maybe Here is overpriced, maybe not, we can’t really say, but given the number of acquisitions Apple has made in mapping, they will be thinking about it.
I thought about this acquisition years ago, I think Here maps was the richest maps service with roads and points of interest. Here in the third world countries (e.g. Jordan) Here maps is the richest and most comprehensive maps service, with all what you expect from such a service, excluding traffic and transit because those services depends on e-government services provided in the country.
It will be the full solution for Apple to a complete maps service, but for the price I think it’s an expensive acquisition comparing with Beats one, and it’s too late for Apple after spending a lots of money on there own maps.
But it will be good if a consortium of companies formed from the mentioned above for example, bought the rights to use Here and integrate it in their own.