Nokia, Yahoo! and NAVTEQ are opening up new possibilities after Nokia and Yahoo! announced a partnership covering email and maps, with NAVTEQ opening up a unique opportunity for advertisers.
Nokia and Yahoo! both stand to gain from the deal, with each leveraging the other’s strengths to solidify their product offering. Where it gets interesting is Nokia subsidiary NAVTEQ which the company purchased in 2007 is releasing its location aware advertising service called LocationPoint which opens up a long term opportunity for Yahoo! to tap into NAVTEQ’s location aware advertising offering.
In commenting on the Nokia-Yahoo! deal, Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum believes it to be a mutually beneficial one but won’t shake up the industry.
“The alliance between Yahoo! and Nokia is a sensible, tactical move but ultimately no game changer for either party. The deal is helpful in bolstering their respective offerings in communications, mapping and navigation but this in itself is not enough to allow them to gain the ground they have lost to sharper rivals like Google and Apple. The most constructive way of viewing the alliance is a first step in a longer term strategy.” She said.
“Under the deal, Nokia will provide Yahoo! with navigation and mapping capabilities, an area where Yahoo! has failed to make an impact but where Nokia has made good progress with Ovi Maps on the back of its 2007 acquisition of NAVTEQ. Nokia will in turn make Yahoo! email and instant messaging default services on all Nokia handsets, including low end phones which dominate in emerging markets. ” She said.
“The broad thrust of the alliance is to improve Nokia and Yahoo’s mobile Internet offerings. The agreement might have some impact in emerging markets, a key focus for both companies and where high-end smartphones are still in the hands of a few. However, we cannot see the deal making waves in Europe or North America, where Yahoo! in particular needs to play a much stronger hand.”
NAVTEQ announced yesterday that its map content and location-based advertising technology LocationPoint has been integrated into Yapp Mobile, Australia’s newest navigation application for the iPhone and is already among the most popular downloaded navigation applications from the Apple iTunes store.
NAVTEQ’s LocationPoint advertising service allows mobile applications to deliver location-intelligent ads and special offers to consumers. NAVTEQ LocationPoint pinpoints where consumers are, delivering special offers for nearby points of purchase, and guide them to your business’ doorstep. Going forward LocationPoint is likely to be included in Yahoo! mapping software both online and for mobile devices.
