Nokia hits EU barrier to Navteq acquisition

HAVING OBTAINED US approval for its $8.1 billion acquisition of Navteq, the digital mapmaker, Nokia now faces an EU anti-trust probe into the proposed deal.

Apparently, regulators are concerned that there are only two big producers of navigable digital maps, while Nokia is the world leader in mobile handsets.

The EU has also felt obliged been to investigate the proposed takeover of the other digital mapmaker, Teleatlas, by the leading supplier of portable Satnav devices, Tomtom.

The EU has set itself a deadline of August 8th to reach a decision.

Its worry is that Nokia might not licence rivals access to Navteq maps on a 'fair and reasonable' basis to rival handset producers.

The same applies to Tomtom licensing Teleatlas maps to other portable satnav suppliers – or even handset manufacturers.

The whole scenario is somewhat bizarre given the complete shambles that surrounds Europe's own attempts to create two GPS services, with the EU's Gallileo designed to compete against the USA's GPS.

As the INQ has said before, one of the reasons why Nokia is so interested in Navteq in the first place is thanks to its GPS expertise.

So Nokia won't find itself locked in yet another 'fair and reasonable' battle with acknowledged GPS expert, Qualcomm.

If the deal does the go-ahead it means that a Finnish handset maker has a strong holdd over mapping data provided on the net via services such as Google and Yahoo maps and AOL's Mapquest.

An interesting one.µ.