Nokia wants Apple, Amazon, or Facebook to buy Here Maps
Nokia is apparently targeting three of the biggest tech companies around on which to offload its unwanted Here Maps division.
It’s been known for a while that the new-look Nokia was considering offloading its struggling mapping business, and now the decision appears to have been made.
According to a new Bloomberg report, Nokia is trying to drum up interest in Here from a number of key players. These include Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, as well as Alibaba, Baidu, Sirius XM Holdings, and Harman International Industries.
The apparent cost for the Here division will be €3 billion – less than half the price it payed for it back in 2008.
Nokia is in the midst of a radical overhaul as it repositions itself as a telecommunications infrastructure supplier.
The Finnish company recently announced its intention to purchase Alcatel Lucent for €15.6 billion to that end. As a footnote to that announcement, Nokia also mentioned that it was looking into selling its Here mapping business.
Nokia’s Here Maps division is seen as a legacy of its former mobile phone-making guise, which effectively ended the day it sold the bulk of its business to Microsoft back in 2014.
Apple, of course, has had well publicised troubles with its own map app, and the solid core of Here Maps (which returned to the App Store last month) could prove an appealing ready-made fix.