Uber bids $3-bn for Nokia’s mapping service, Here

Taxi-hailing service Uber, though best known for allowing people to book a taxi through its smartphone application, is now positioning itself as a logistics company, aiming to deliver people and things within cities as quickly as possible, currently relying on Google's Maps.

Uber has put in a bid for Nokia's Here, the main competitor to Google Maps, for $3 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the offer, The New York Times reported citing sources requesting anonymity.

Nokia announced last month that it was considering selling the business (See: Nokia seeks to sell maps business valued at $2.1 bn).

Uber is competing with a consortium of German automakers, including BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, two of the people said. The automakers would be in alliance with the Chinese search engine Baidu on the offer, the people said. An undisclosed private equity firm had also submitted a separate bid, and Nokia was expected to announce the sale of its mapping unit by the end of May.

Meanwhile, analysts told NYT that the buyout would give Uber ''access to a fully established digital mapping business.'' Further since its cab sharing service worked using geospatial-mapping data to pair riders with drivers, obtaining HERE would be like hitting the jackpot.

''It's extraordinarily difficult to get this type of mapping data,'' Jamie Moss, an analyst at the technology research company Ovum in London, told NYT. ''Other than Google, Here is one of the few companies that can offer this data right now.''

Uber had also made it known that it partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to create the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, which would focus on ''research and development, primarily in the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology.''

While Uber experimented with autonomous sensors, it would need a team completely devoted to updating its mapping services for a driverless car to be fully functional and safe which was where HERE would fit in.

However, Uber would be facing some extremely well-heeled players in the automobile industry.

The prospect of players from Silicon Valley, particularly Google, Apple, and Facebook, getting to lay their hands on Here, had caused German auto manufactures, who were major clients of the digital maps, to close ranks.

Uber's storming into the bid with a hefty offer would worry auto executives, say commentators.