Nokia acquisition of Gate5 a sign of things to come?

location based services

just returned from CTIA in Los Angeles where I listened to a lot of discussion on the implications of Nokia's purchase of Gate 5 last month. A colleague at the Canalys show in Geneva told me the same was true there. It is interesting not only that Nokia is jumping into this market, but also where they decided to jump in. Rather than buying a network based navigation application as one might expect for a mobile phone manufacturer, they bought an on-board application where the map data and navigation ap[plication reside on the mobile device, not the network. Couple that with the roadmaps that the map data companies are showing for dynamic content such as traffic, gas prices, etc. and it seems pretty obvious that Nokia will be moving towards a hybrid navigation model, with base map data and navigation application on the device supplemented by dynamic content and value added data from the network. Garmin and TomTom have made efforts in this areas, but Nokia has the market presence to drive the market if customers see the value. Watch that space!