Nokia/Navteq deal makes waves

The acquisition of Navteq by Nokia will, in the opinion of industry experts, greatly accelerate the development of mobile phone navigation systems and other 'connected navigation devices', i.e. devices that interlink navigation with content from the Internet.

"This acquisition will drive a paradigm shift in navigation. Navigation of the future is connected," says Hans-Hendrik Puvogel, CEO of Munich-based Jentro Technologies.

Jentro is the latest winner of the Navteq LBS award and, according to market researcher Canalys, is Europe's number two in mobile phone navigation after Nokia.

'The valuable assets Nokia gains with the acquisition of Navteq are not only the maps, but also the latter's location-based services (LBS), including traffic information from Traffic.com and travel information from Discover Cities,' says Puvogel.

The market analyst Strategy Analytics sees the market for LBS growing from around 200 million dollars in 2006 to 1.2 billion in 2011.

Puvogel believes that in future content will generally play a key role within the billion-dollar navigation market.

Under the name 'location-based experience,' a new discipline is currently evolving, which combines local searches, maps, route navigation and dynamic information from the Internet.