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BMW, Audi, and Mercedes Want to Buy Nokia's Here Mapping Group

posted by CoolHand on Thursday May 07 2015, @10:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the battle-of-the-corporate-giants dept.

sigma writes:

In a move that could backfire badly, car manufacturers are working together to buy control of Nokia maps with the intent of blocking Google's development of software for self-driving vehicles. The auto-makers consider open sourced autonomous vehicles to be an existential threat to their existing business, and are prepared to pay Nokia more than two billion dollars to stymie the disruptive technology.

“The greatest threat to the automobile industry would be if Google developed an operating system for self-driving cars and made it available free to everyone,” said one source speaking with the WSJ.

http://jalopnik.com/bmw-audi-and-mercedes-benz-want-to-buy-nokia-s-maps-t-1702660909

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by davester666 on Friday May 08 2015, @06:13AM

    by davester666 (155) on Friday May 08 2015, @06:13AM (#180207)

    They see it as the next step of the car industry.

    Previously, you effectively pay for the car up front, and the manufacturer only gets a little more ongoing money from dealers for parts/labour [as part of their franchise arrangement].

    Now, they want you to pay up front for the car, AND pay monthly fee's to use the features of your car that you already paid for [like, say, navigation maps or wifi]. And if they make it easy for Apple and Google to just hook up their phone [or even worse, just have it in the car and it works], that makes the sales pitch for paying for maps and another monthly cellular bill that much less appealing. And as a bonus, they can track how and where your drive, what's going on with your car and sell it to make even more money. And then there are helpful ads that need to be displayed [turn left into the Arby's parking lot, and buy a Philly for 20% off].

    IoT is going to be the death of us. Every manufacturer sees it as a way to generate revenue first, and helping the customer second [if at all].

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