In a press release this morning Nokia has announced that it has agreed to purchase digital mapping service provider NAVTEQ for $78 a share including the assumption of all debts incurred by the firm and any outstanding options, which would total an approximate amount of $8.1 billion dollars.
This purchase, expected to close in the first quarter of 2008, would be the largest acquisition of its kind by Nokia, and is part of a recent strategy to provide services outside of its base in hardware sales, by branching out into integrated software offerings and bundled multimedia services.
For its part, NAVTEQ will continue to operate independently within the Nokia Group and serve its current and future customer base as before with no changes.
NAVTEQ provides the map data used in the Nokia N95 and other select Nokia devices.
