Nokia purchased NAVTEQ / Nokia (NYSE: NOK) for $8.1 billion dollars in 2007 when Nokia's stock was trading upwards of $30+ dollars per share. Now Nokia's stock is trading at less than $6 per share and sinking. Nokia's market cap is approximately $20B with annual sales of $55B. When Nokia purchased Navteq it had a market capitalization of $120B. So this begs the question of how much is NAVTEQ worth to Nokia these days? It appears that NAVTEQ will do €600 million in revenue ($1B in US dollars) in 2011 while still losing money.
With Nokia struggling to get traction in the smartphone space it makes sense that NAVTEQ could be a ripe buyout candidate from a company like Microsoft or Apple who desperately need a map platform. NAVTEQ products embedded in just about every car that has a navigation system embedded in the car. Overprice I must say but the car manufacturers are selling the software for thousands of dollars when Google Maps is free. Google Maps on the other hand is free but ad support and works great for most smartphone users. Google Maps is not as reliable as NAVTEQ for navigation but it gets the job done at a fraction of the cost.