Germany: After months of negotiation, Nokia has sold it’s HERE Maps division to the German consortium, BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen for $2.71 billion. HERE Maps will now act as an open platform, which all car manufacturers can use for navigation and mapping inside vehicles. The three German companies plan to offer the platform to Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Peugeot, Ford, Toyota and General Motors, allowing them to use the mapping service for free without licensing issues. In the initial round of bidding Nokia failed to convince Uber, Baidu, Alibaba, Facebook and other tech companies to stick around. Nokia’s HERE generated more than half its €970 million in 2014 sales from the auto industry, and the rest from location-based services.
Source: BMW blog
