Nokia added yet another company to its growing roster of mobile services firms with an announcement Monday that it will acquire Plazes, a location-based services provider for an undisclosed sum.
The Plazes acquisition will be Nokia’s ninth purchase of a mobile services or content firm in the last two and a half years and continues the cell phone maker’s transformation into a full-service mobile player.
Faced with major mobile phone pricing pressures and increasing market saturation, Nokia is leading the charge among handset makers looking to expand into ancillary businesses, particularly mobile applications.
In the last two-and-a-half years Nokia acquired mobile services, content, and application firms Intellisync, Loudeye, Gate5, Twango, Navteq, Enpocket, Avennu, and Trolltech.
“Nokia is at the forefront of a major shift in the mobile market, bypassing the carriers and offering users a set of applications that do not require the carriers’ blessing,” said Shahid Khan, a partner with IBB Consulting Group.
Google and Nokia have championed a movement to open the mobile market by giving cell phone users “off-deck” options to access mobile music, social networks, file sharing, maps and navigation services.
The “off-deck” world has benefitted in recent years from the popularity of WiFi integration in mobile handsets which gives users an alternate means of getting to the web.
“The open mobile trend is extending beyond phones to consumer products which are being WiFi enabled so these companies can find other ways to make money,” Mr. Khan said.
Plazes, a three-year-old firm based in Zurich, but which operates primarily out of Berlin, markets a location-enabled social networking application. Using the service, friends can update each other automatically on their exact whereabouts using both their PCs and mobile phones.
The company attracted early investments from Esther Dyson and Marc Andreessen but took its first VC funding in February 2007, two years after its official launch. It got $3.5 million from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures.