FRANKFURT/HELSINKI: German carmakers BMW, Audi and Mercedes, will pay around €2.5 billion (RM10.6bil) to buy Nokia's maps business, a transformational deal that will help them to develop self-driving cars.
Daimler BMW and Audi will each hold an equal stake in the business, known as HERE, keeping it from falling into the hands of a new rivals which are emerging from Silicon Valley.
The premium carmakers agreed to pay €2.5 billion. The deal has an enterprise value of €2.8 billion (RM11.8bil), including liabilities worth nearly 300 million euros (RM1.3bil), Nokia said. The transaction is likely to close in the first quarter of 2016.
BMW, Audi and Daimler, which invented the modern motorcar in 1886, want to own the customer relationships that otherwise could shift to challengers such as Uber, Google or Apple.
"With the joint acquisition of HERE, we want to secure the independence of this central service for all vehicle manufacturers, suppliers and customers in other industries," Daimler chief executive Dieter Zetsche said.
Intelligent mapping systems like HERE's form the basis on which self-driving cars linked to wireless networks can perform functions such as recalculating a route if data about a traffic jam or an accident is transmitted to the car.
In the future, such mapping systems will have a role to play in collision detection and other features of self-driving cars.
