Today's announcement that Nokia is buying Navteq at a $2 billion premium to its market cap is a very big deal. Winning the next generation of the Web is all about owning data, and Navteq is the clear leader in local data. As the second use case for local emerges -- mobile users with immediate contextual questions, as opposed to deskbound users planning for the future -- Nokia's mobile platform technologies and devices will play more and more central a role in user's access to information. Navteq's data underpins both of those use cases, both today and in the future.
When Google is building phones, Nokia is buying data service companies, and Apple is gleefully playing up and down the stack, it's time to recognize that the mobile/web, phone/computer convergence that we've been talking about for at least 10 years is finally arriving.
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