Sizing Up The Suitors For Here, Nokia’s Map Business
While HERE was last valued at around $2 billion, offers might come in significantly higher than that: Nokia’s trove of driving directions and maps, as well as related location technology and patents, is one of the biggest and more valuable mapping assets to come to the market in years.
How valuable? One former longtime senior employee of HERE estimates there are around 300 different location attributes, with corresponding historical databases, that can be tracked using HERE’s technology. They include more obvious mapping and location-based applications such as driving directions and street maps, but also spatial data technology used in video and gaming applications.
“It’s incredibly difficult to get the type of mapping data that Here has. Base geometry and 20-40 road attributes are relatively easy to collect. However, to collect the 250+ attributes needed for the best navigation experience requires a combination of field teams and user-generated content,” notes entrepreneur Kurt Uhlir.
“HERE has proprietary collection hardware and software that is unmatched, even by Google. Plus, they have the most extensive patent portfolio covering collecting and creating spatial content for current generation of maps and dynamic data. Here also has the foundational patents covering usage of spatial data for creating video games, movie content and the upcoming ADAS vehicle applications.”
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Kurt is a globally-recognized 10x marketer, operator, and speaker. He has built and run early-stage companies as well as those over $1B in annual revenue, assembled teams across six continents, been part of the small team leading an IPO ($880M), and participated in dozens of acquisitions. His unique experience being inside hundreds of high-growth companies with the opportunity to analyze, scale, make changes of leadership, and oversee operations has labeled him “the king of scaling companies”. This has enabled him to advise thousands of leaders, from startup founders to the President of the United States.
