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Nokia acquires Plazes to expand location-based services

Handset manufacturer Nokia has acquired German mobile social network Plazes to expand its location-based mapping services and its business into the entertainment sphere.

By acquiring Plazes, Nokia will be able to extend its context-based service offering with social presence and time-based activity planning features. The company has not announced a timeframe for integrating Plazes with the existing development line of its services and software business.

"We are building a truly global and world-class Internet services business through our own innovations and skill sets as well as by acquiring key talent and assets from a variety of geographies and cultures," said Kendra Petrone, Nokia's White Plains, NY-based communications manager.

"This acquisition is about accelerating Nokia's services and software strategy with expertise and technology in a particular area: social activity," she said.

"With the Plazes technology, Nokia can further strengthen its position in location-based services. We anticipate that this acquisition will accelerate the development of Nokia's location-aware services in line with Nokia's strategy, thereby speeding up time-to-market."

Last August, Nokia created an Internet service and online music store called Ovi to compete with Apple's iTunes store, which also has a mapping component.

Plazes is a Web service platform that uses a small piece of software called the "Plazer" for location detection.

The Plazer works on all major operating systems both in the PC and the mobile world and scans for so-called location hints such as WiFi signals and GPS signals and checks the user in at the "Plaze" connected to a specific location fingerprint.

The system then triggers an update of the user's location and status on the Plazes.com Web site and sends out messages to external systems to publish the user's new activity to services like Twitter or Facebook. This lets consumers coordinate activities with their network of friends and family, as well as to collect and share interesting Plazes using their mobile phone.

Plazes is a privately-owned start-up company of 13 people with its principal operations in Berlin. The deal between Nokia and Plazes was initially announced on June 23, 2008.

These types of companies are becoming a hot commodity in the mobile arena. Nokia recently acquired Navteq (see story). In May Vodafone acquired Danish startup ZYB, another so-called mobile social network, for more than $50 million.

"We are entering a new phase of mobility where GPS adds context awareness, allowing Internet services to be tailored for specific people, places and times," Ms. Petrone said.

"We have now completed our acquisitions of both Navteq and Plazes, marking a strong step forward for our context-aware, location-based Internet services strategy," she said.

"This will enable Nokia contribute to the next generation of Web innovation and offer other companies the ability to utilize context information to make their services more relevant to people."