German Car Makers Buy Nokia Maps

#aftermarket – German car makers BMW, Audi and Mercedes, will pay around €2.5-billion ($2.8-billion U.S.) to buy Nokia’s maps business, beating out high-tech rivals for location services seen as key to the future of self-driving cars.

Germany’s three premium car makers joined forces and will hold equal stakes in the business, known as HERE, coming together to keep the assets from falling into the hands of Internet rivals in Silicon Valley or China.

The deal has an enterprise value of €2.8-billion, including liabilities worth nearly €300-million, for which Nokia will compensate the car makers, the Finnish company said on Monday. The transaction is likely to close in the first quarter of 2016.

The deal allows the auto makers to offer new premium features, like autonomous driving, in their luxury cars, shaking up the pecking order between car makers, their parts suppliers and software rivals like Uber, Google or Apple.

“With the joint acquisition of HERE, we want to secure the independence of this central service for all vehicle manufacturers, suppliers and customers in other industries,” said Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche of Daimler.

But it is unclear how other HERE customers, including rival car makers, may respond to Germany’s car makers owning map technology, which many in the auto, Internet and logistics industries see as key to their own strategies.

“There is a risk that the other auto makers will be pushed further into the arms of Google,” said Richard Windsor an independent financial analyst who tracks major tech players.

HERE’s primary competitor is Google Maps.

Intelligent mapping systems like HERE’s are the basis on which self-driving cars linked to wireless networks can perform functions such as recalculating a route to the nearest electric charging station or around a traffic jam or accident. They are also used in everything from consumer smartphone navigation to local transport services.

HERE is the leading supplier of digital maps for most of the world’s top car makers, accounting for half its expected $1.1-billion revenues in 2015. It also supplies mapping services to Internet customers including Amazon, Yahoo and Baidu.

In addition, it competes with smaller Dutch mapping firm TomTom, which has begun to retool its business to focus on car makers rather than consumers. TomTom recently teamed up with Bosch [ROBG.UL], one of the world’s top auto suppliers, to create an alternative platform to HERE for car makers.

HERE was created via the $8.1-billion acquisition of Navteq in 2008 by Nokia, which aimed to create consumer map services for mobile phone users but later switched to focus on car makers. Nokia is now shedding its maps business as it integrates its purchase of telecom network equipment maker Alcatel Lucent.