Nokia made waves with their recent announcement that they wanted to acquire navigational-map maker Navteq for the right-old sum of $8.1 billion. Of course, the deal was subject to shareholder approval, and it looks like Navteq investors have just greenlighted the deal.
With federal regulators already on-board with the buy-out deal, the shareholders’ thumbs-up was the last obstacle to Nokia’s acquisition of Navteq. An “overwhelming majority” approved the deal today at a special shareholder meeting.
This acquisition is a large part of Nokia’s new push to offer services for the mobile market, and could anchor Nokia’s effort to demand revenue kickbacks for services from wireless carriers – much like Apple already demands for iPhone-related revenue. Navteq and Nokia together – they’ll likely define the future of positional mapping services for the mobile market for the next few years. And, with services like “Comes with Music” and Ovi already offered out-of-the-box, Nokia’s stance as a service-provider will probably the business model that major manufacturers will be looking to mimic. That is, as long as these services gain enough momentum to become a true competitor to incumbents like Google and iTunes.
[Via: Yahoo]