Nokia does a Google

Is Nokia doing a Google? Paying obscene valuations for technologies that look good?

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Agreed. In a mobile, connected world, maps are becoming a hugely strategic asset. All kinds of burgeoning digital revenue streams are being created on the backs of maps: local search, friend finders, family tracking, location-aware advertising and turn-by-turn navigation. If you control the map, you control the game.

In July, the industry woke up to just how valuable maps could be when TomTom, the Dutch manufacturer of personal global positioning system navigation devices, said it would buy Belgian mapmaker Tele Atlas for approximately $2.7 billion.

But look what Nokia is doing… offers $8.1 b for NavTeq a digital mapping company with an earnings of $200 MM ! You can just imagine the Fins sitting around some big table wearing their Viking helmets and tucking into some reindeer steaks and saying, We must do something! Now! What can we buy?

For 8 billion, I'd be willing to go map everything for the poor Fins. I sympathize that they are basically aquatic animals, and are sort of wobbly on dry ground, so they need someone to do the mapping for them, but that's a lot of moolah for the job.

What do you think…?

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