Nokia’s Navigation System bought by German Luxury Automakers

The transaction values HERE at an enterprise value of Euro 2.8 billion.

A group of German luxury-car makers including BMW are close to sealing the purchase of Nokia Oyj’s digital-maps business for about 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion), people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

“The three partners will each hold an equal stake in HERE; none of them seeks to acquire a majority interest”, the official statement said.

While there has previously been limited cooperation on auto parts, a joint acquisition on this scale involving BMW, Volkswagen AG’s Audi division and Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler would be unprecedented.

Intelligent mapping systems are the basis on which self-driving cars linked to wireless networks can perform intelligent functions such as recalculating a route if data about a traffic jam or an accident is transmitted to the vehicle. The deal underscores the German competitors’ push for self-driving systems independent of technology giants such as Google Inc., which is looking at entering the auto industry. As TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden explained when assessing the bidders last month, the business’s location technology patents, databases and location attributes (which a former senior HERE employee pegged at 300), made it “one of the biggest and more valuable mapping assets to come to the market in years”. That deal received US antitrust clearance in mid-June.