Nokia acquiring Navteq is huge, I’m surprised there wasn’t more of a discussion about it. With this move Nokia is going all in with location-based services as a competitive differentiator and if my experiences are any indicator this is a good move.

If you are a handset manufacturer you can’t compete on platform anymore but fashion, media integration, and GPS services and not much else really matters in this market.

Nokia is betting that projections of a tenfold increase in location-based services over the next 5 years is accurate, and that a consequence of consolidating a leadership position in handsets will crossover into non-handset applications, such as vehicle integration and data services for web applications.

I say this because I am increasingly using mobile location-based services and was finding Navizon’s iPhone app to be really helpful until Apple put the ‘ol metal bracelets on my handset and disabled the service.

Tags: iPhone, Nokia, Navteq, GPS