The Where Platform from Nokia: a company move to taking data as a raw material to build products

This week news regarding the subject in the title are summarized in the following Nokia blog posts and videos embedded in those posts:
– From Where 2.0 To Just Where; With Meh 2.0 Somewhere In The Middle [blog of Gary Gale from Nokia, April 6, 2012] in which you can find his Platform, APIs & Apps: Building the Where Ecosystem presentation at Where 2012 with detailed speaker notes as well
– Nokia Location Platform: The Leading Where Platform [Nokia microsite since Oct 26, 2011]

– Nokia Maps at Where 2012 round-up [Nokia Conversations, April 6, 2012]
– Nokia at Where 2012 [Nokia Conversations, April 3, 2012]
– The location business – Nokia’s Where Platform [Nokia Conversations, April 3, 2012]
– Nokia Location & Commerce – Christof Hellmis, VP, Map Platform, Nokia [nokianederland YouTube channel, Dec 2, 2011]

– Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 graduated! [to a commercial offering] [Nokia Beta Labs blog, April 4, 2012]
– New features on maps.nokia.com and Nokia Maps Suite for Symbian [Nokia Conversations, April 4, 2012], see also the Nokia Maps set the 3D world on fire, with heat maps [Nokia Conversations, July 27, 2011], Nokia Maps for Web update [Nokia Conversations, Oct 25, 2011] and Nokia Maps 3D now with navigation [Nokia Conversations, Dec 7, 2011], as well as the associated Nokia launches photorealistic 3D models of metropolitan areas for Ovi Maps [Nokia press release, April 19, 2011] from last year all related to that
– Nokia Lumia 900 – Drive and Maps [nokia YouTube channel, April 3, 2012]

Experience the amazing everyday and see just why the Nokia Lumia 900http://nokia.ly/HYUsNk is beautifully different. Want to feel like a local anywhere? Nokia Drive and Nokia Maps give you comprehensive mobile navigation and the insider knowledge to make it happen. With support across 95 countries, you’ll get accurate turn-by-turn directions to the destination of your choice, as well as information on all the cool places to visit when you get there. Drive and Maps is one in a series of 5 quick introduction demos to the wonderful world of Nokia Lumia. Each video highlights different hubs and features, letting you dive deeper into the world of Nokia with Windows Phone.

– New Maps, Drive and Transport in depth [Nokia Conversations, March 1, 2012]
– Expert Advice: Location Context, Relevance for Revenue [by Christopher Peralta from Nokia in GPS World, Jan 31, 2012]
– NAVTEQ® Map Selected By Galigeo To Power Geospatial Business Intelligence [Nokia Location & Commerce press release, March 29, 2012]: “Pioneering specialist integrates the ‘Where’ factor into business analysis”
– Peugeot, Dacia, Audi, Scania, Nikon, and Yandex becoming NAVTEQ® Map – just the new additions in Q1 2012 [from Nokia Location & Commerce press releases]

From the all above a reference is particularly relevant to the subject of The Where Platform: Gary Gale’s (Director of Places, Nokia Location&Commerce) session on Tuesday, April 3^rd at 1:40pm in Yerba Buena Salon 10-11. There is already a downloadable version of his Platform, APIs & Apps: Building the Where Ecosystem presentation (with speaker notes here) which by itself providing a lot of background information worth to study.

To spare you a lot of time and information search, I am providing below a complete overview of the whole effort:
– with The Where Platform they are trying to get to smart data: i.e. combining sets of behavioral and contextual data about the real world
– such a direction is coming from the observation of the following trend by Nokia:

which has lead to the discovery of the following strategic foundation for their redefined Location & Commerce business, i.e. The (so called) Where Platform:

For developers there is an evolving set of platform APIs:

which were described by Gary Gale’s this week as: [was actually announced on the event]

We already have a set of modular, configurable, highly performant APIs that are easy to use and to integrate, with an active developer community who appreciate our simple and fair terms of use. For the web, we have JavaScript APIs for Maps and for Places as well as a new Places web service API [which was actually announced on the event], more of which in a few moments. We’re going to be unifying the JavaScript APIs for Maps and for Places into single API under the Nokia Maps for JavaScript APIbanner.

There’s also our Map Image web service API and our upcoming Maps API for HTML5, which I’ll talk more about in a few slide’s time.

And for native mobile use, there’s out Maps API for Qt and our Places API for JavaME and coming later this year our Maps API for Windows Phone.

APIs are of course utterly critical to the Where platform and the Where ecosystem but we also to ensure that we cover all the screens that act as touch-point between the digital and real words for people throughout their day. As I move from my computer at work, to my laptop, to my in-car nav system, to my tablet, our goal is to have an offering for virtually any of these screens.

…

We’re also announcing a closed beta of our Nokia Maps HTML5 API, which is the first of many huge milestones we hope to achieve to expand our APIs and presence across screens as quickly as possible.

Note: Go to the Nokia Maps API microsite as an easy to comprehend directory for these APIs. The JavaScript APIs are under the “Web” banner in that directory (including Positioning, Directions and Traffic as well) while the web service APIs under the “REST[ful]” banner.

The very basis for all that is certainly the advanced mapping capability which came to Nokia in 2008 with the acquisition of NAVTEQ company. The state of that mapping was quite well presented a year ago in the following video recorded presentation:

Where 2.0 2011 (April 19-21, 2011), Michael Halbherr, “Holistic and Virtuous Map Community Platform“, introducing you to a concept … a truly global location platform, one that is built on the world’s most accurate mapping and navigation assets.

Then in the end of October 2011 (Nokia World 2011, Oct 26-27, 2011) came the announcement of The Where Platform as the enabler for The (so called) Third Phase of Mobility:

where content of different kind is made available to different kind of smart devices via The Where Platform of smart data services (Mapping, Directions/Guidance, Places/Search etc.). Thanks to the built-in learning capabilities of that platform we will have a continuously improving digital and also predictive model of the physical world on hands which is going to empower our everyday life in a tremendous way. Our life as both individuals and as active members of a collaborative society.

Nokia is going with that as far as drawing the following parallel:

Watch the following recorded presentation [on slideshare] about that:

Dr Michael Halbherr at Nokia World 2011 (Oct 26-27, 2011): http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld/speaking about “Location-aware technology could turn us back into location-aware people – Exploring the third phase of mobility” Nokia World is an annual conference and exhibition devoted to all things Nokia, that took place this year on the 26th and 27th October in London. The two days were packed with captivating talks, inspiring discussions, exciting surprises, fruitful networking. The event offered visitors to experience all new mobile products, services and innovations from Nokia and partners. Michael heads the Location and Commerce unit in Nokia, including NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of mapping assets.

This presentation is describing the framework envisaged by Nokia for the:

Creating the Third Phase

1 Real-World Computable

	01 Index An Index of the things in the real world		02 Platform Making the real world computable

CREATING A COMPUTABLE MODEL OF THE REAL WORLD

2 Sensed Behaviour

	01 Sensors [see above under the “sensor evolution”]		02 Experiences Drive, Traffic, Transit, Live View, Nearby, Maps, Tracks, Pulse

GATHERING DATA IN THE REAL WORLD

3 Learning Platform

Real-World Computable

Sensed Behaviour

Smart Data, Real World Answers

KNOWLEDGE FOR THE REAL WORLD

As such we arrive to: Nokia’s Smart Data Analytics – Understanding You and the World [nokia YouTube channel, Nov 9, 2011]

The world lives and breathes and has a central nervous system: You. Where you go and what you do when you get there, leaving digital traces that are subtly captured around us. Data that makes it possible to paint a digital picture of the world and the people in it, every second. Data collected from everywhere that connects to everywhere. Infinite data points that only make sense, when they’re transformed into intelligence. Built on smart data principles, and the digital footprints of hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide. The Nokia Platform understands: Who, what, where, when, why, and how. To help answer, what next? Smart data gets smarter over time. Smart data makes it possible to personalize services that speak to who we are, and help us make the most of the moment. The world lives, breathes and changes constantly. Smart data, to make sense of that change, changes everything. Follow us on Twitter here – http://nokia.ly/j7zixs Or connect with us on Facebook here – http://nokia.ly/hWCnbn

Here I would also recommend a presentation [on slideshare] [July 14, 2011] on Nokia’s Big Data and Data Analytics present and future, from which I will include here only the following two illustrations as they are providing a very usefull further explanation for all of the above:

NEW! Location & Commerce To Spearhead Nokia’s Revised Services Mission

Location & Commerce combine Nokia’s and NAVTEQ’s leading positions in social location services and location data
– It is a testimonial of our success and a natural next step in our journey

Together we will deliver a complete and differentiated offering to consumers, business customers and advertisers
– Our intent is to become the leading platform in the world

Success comes from combining unique reference data sets with high consumer engagement

Combining Different Types Of Data to Create Smart Data – Our Unique Opportunity

Derived data – data with intelligent meaning is required to feed online services to what server the user at what time. As relevancy is the differentiator in between useful information and spam, derived data is of extreme value.

Data that is fixed and based on hard facts such as Places (OPR), Geography (Navteq) and Public Transport Timetables.		Data gathered by sensors and interactions of the users with his environment such as Payments, CheckIns into social networks, GPS probes when navigating. Photos and NFC.		The interpretation of activity at a certain location lead to an Intelligent conclusion. It creates data that is smart which then can be understood by humans.

Going deeper into Big Data and Data Analytics is possible via the following recorded discussions and presentations:

Amy O’Connor & Gary Gale at Nokia World 2011 (Oct 26-27, 2011): http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld/ speaking about: “Indexing the real world, in real time, takes apps to new places“

Amy leads Nokia’s Analytics team and is committed to helping Nokia become a ‘smart data’ company that delivers the best experience for consumers. Prior to joining Nokia, Amy was vice president of services marketing for Sun Microsystems, and previously held engineering and business strategy leadership roles in the information technology industry. She has an MBA from Northeastern University and dual bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Self professed “geek with a life”, geo-blogger, geo-talker and geo-tweeter, Gary works in London and Berlin as Director of the Places Registry for Nokia, bringing his extensive geo experience and his fascination with technology to the Location and Commerce unit. In addition to his role at Nokia, Gary co-founded WhereCamp EU, is the chair of w3gconf and sits on the W3C POI Working Group and the UK Location User Group. A contributor to the Mapstraction mapping API, Gary speaks and presents at a wide range of conferences and events including Where 2.0, State of the Map, AGI GeoCommunity, Geo-Loco, Social-Loco, GeoMob, the BCS GeoSpatial SG and LocBiz.

Nokia Senior Director of Analytics Amy O’Connor discusses the challenges of managing and analyzing Big Data. Speaking live inside theCUBE at Hadoop World 2011 (November 8-9, 2011), O’Connor said between Nokia’s mobile phone business and location-based business, the company is awash in data.

Nokia’s Amy O’Connor lends her take to the Hadoop v. data warehousing debate, live inside theCUBE from Hadoop World 2011 (November 8-9, 2011), in New York City with Wikibon’s Dave Vellante and SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier.

Amy O’Connor in theCube: Nokia Looks to Hadoop for Transforming Data Solutions and Consumer Apps [SiliconANGLE blog, Nov 9, 2011]

The troubles facing smartphone manufacturer Nokia have been front and center a lot latelyso seeing them at Hadoop World 2011 shines a light on their future intent. Nokia Senior Director of Analytics, Amy O’Connor, came into theCube for an interview with John Furrier and Dave Vellante about how Nokia is using Hadoop and unstructured data to provide data services for their customers. The discussion ran from the gathering of information from customers, some about privacy and anonymization, and most importantly how the cellphone maker intends to use big data solutions such as Hadoop to build and guide their infrastructure decisions.

O’Connor says that Nokia really has two businesses coming together: the mobile phone business and their location-based business. Much of the location-based setups for Yelp, Yahoo!, others happen to be based on Nokia’s maps. The first phase was to allow phones to go mobile, the second phase was making computers go mobile, and the third phase has been to congeal data and physical presence: straight-up augmented reality.

The phones that Nokia produces collect a great deal of data from sensors in the phone, from customer relationships, from how they’re used, and how they interact with the network and one another. As a result, Nokia might be a company who manufactures phones; but they produce a lot of data as exhaust. That means that the smartphone maker has a huge amount of product that they need to then manage.

The data challenges that Nokia faces with respect to data happen to be myriad, but the biggest one has always been privacy. “We’ve traditionally been a company who have leaned towards the side of anonymized data and privacy,” O’Connor told John Furrier. “And we’re a global company…that means it’s the biggest, biggest concern that we have.”

While the Nokia Senior Director wanted everyone to know that privacy is a huge concern and direction for the phone maker, John wanted to know more about how they used Hadoop to perform solutions for all the data they’re gathering.

Nokia is currently running a Hadoop system. Since each division faced a great deal of data challenges people started to begin pulling from the open source community and decided to centralize a bunch of Hadoop solutions. They decided to make one-big-shift and centralize their data analysis division; but they intended to do it with a hub and spokes. The beating heart of analysis at Nokia happens to be a Hadoop system, but it feeds satellite projects and analysiswho can take the data and transform it from that point.

Many of the cellphone maker’s products happen to be consumer apps. These apps are enabled via data, they consume, transform, and manufacture data and all of that needs to move through the infrastructure. As a result, Nokia felt that the centralized aspect of using Hadoop at the center as a command and control and data warehouse center would give them the most agile setup for scaling and bringing data to their customers.

“Technology keeps changing, and I’ve been in the industry a long time, and it keeps changing and if we don’t get in front of that, we’ll fall behind and someone else will take over,” O’Connor said. “We have a 120 terabyte warehouse in Teradata…” Instead of pushing further data into that Teradata warehouse that just won’t fit or would overwhelm the data scientists—or worse runs on unstructured data—Nokia has sought to put it through Hadoop so that it could be transformed and brought back in again.

Hadoop World 2011: Changing Company Culture with Hadoop [Cloudera video with presentation [on slideshare], Nov 9, 2011]

We are living in a time of tremendous convergence, convergence of mobile, cloud and social… This convergence is forcing companies to change. At Nokia, we are changing the way we make decisions, from a manufacturing model to a data driven one. Yet making cultural changes is one of the hardest things to accomplish. In this talk, Amy O’Connor will highlight the journey Nokia is taking to evolve its culture – from building a platform for cultural evolution on top of Hadoop, to the administration of Nokia’s data, to how the company conducts the analysis that is enabling Nokia to compete with data.

See also:
– big data analytics [SearchBusinessAnalytics.com definition article, January 2012]
– Hadoop [SearchCloudComputing.com definition article, June 2008]
– Big data [wikipedia article], Analytics [wikipedia article], Apache Hadoop [wikipedia article]
– Hadoop Players Question Forrester’s Take On Leaders [InformationWeek, Feb 6, 2012]: “Forrester’s first-ever Hadoop market assessment draws mixed reactions, both for its leader rankings and for the players who were left out.”
– The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Hadoop Solutions, Q1 2012 [Forrester Research, Inc. report, Feb 2, 2012]

Amazon Web Services, IBM, EMC Greenplum, MapR, Cloudera, And Hortonworks Lead This Emerging Market, With Seven Others Serving Key Niches Close Behind

In Forrester’s 15-criteria evaluation of enterprise Hadoop solution providers, we found that in the Leaders category, Amazon Web Services led the pack due to its proven, feature-rich Elastic MapReduce subscription service; IBM and EMC Greenplum offer Hadoop solutions within strong EDW portfolios; MapR and Cloudera impress with best-of-breed enterprise-grade distributions; and Hortonworks offers an impressive Hadoop professional services portfolio. Strong Performer Pentaho provides an impressive Hadoop data integration tool. Of the Contenders, DataStax provides a Hadoop platform for real-time, distributed, transactional deployments; Datameer has a user-friendly Hadoop/MapReduce modeling tool; Platform Computing and Zettaset offer best-of-breed Hadoop cluster management tools; and Outerthought has optimized its Hadoop platform for high-volume search and indexing. HStreaming is a Risky Bet with a solution that is strong in real-time Hadoop.

The Cube – Strata Conference 2012 (Feb 28–March 1, 2012) – Amy O’Connor, Nokia, with John Furrier and Dave Vellante

Nokia: Using Big Data to Bridge the Virtual & Physical Worlds [Cloudera channel on vimeo, April 5, 2012]

Nokia’s goal is to bring the world to the third phase of mobility: leveraging data to make it easier to navigate the physical world. Nokia relies on a technology ecosystem with Cloudera’s Distribution including Hadoop at its core to achieve this goal.

Sara Rossio at Nokia World 2011 (Oct 26-27, 2011): http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld/speaking about “Capturing activity to show how life is, not was“

As a Director of Product Management, Sara partners to bring smart data to everyday life. She believes that location enabled solutions can make a difference in consumers’ daily lives, providing them with the tools to navigate and interact with an ever changing world. Based in Chicago, Sara enjoys working across the Location & Commerce unit to make personalized location data available in real time for everyone.

Alex Osaki & Thom Brenner at Nokia World 2011 (Oct 26-27, 2011): http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld/ speaking about: “Enriching real-world experiences through location app“

As the VP Applications, Thom brings his interest in building solutions that apply scientific knowledge to practical problems to Nokia’s Location and Commerce unit. He is focused on developing applications that use real-time location data to ease every day uncertainties. Alex believes that science fiction writers got it wrong: the future of technology isn’t about people living in a virtual world; the future of technology is letting people experience the real world in a richer, more dynamic way.

As a Proposition Manager in Nokia’s location apps, Alex helps to give voice to the potential and unique power of location on mobile devices and the web. He was drawn to Nokia because they speak the same language: mobile technology’s promise goes beyond the screen. It shouldn’t be a distraction — it should be an amazing tool to help us discover new places, experience new things, make new friends, and connect with people in new ways.

Regarding the new Location & Commerce business see also:
– Nokia renews mission for mobile and location based services; appoints Michael Halbherr Executive Vice President [Nokia press release, June 22, 2011]
– Biography of Michael Halbherr [Nokia Leadership Team]
– Nokia under transition (as reported by the company) [this blog, March 11, 2012] from which I will copy here the following strategic statements:

As of October 1, 2011, the Group formed a Location & Commerce business which combines NAVTEQ and Nokia’s social location services operations from Devices & Services. Location & Commerce business is an operating and reportable segment.
…
Location & Commerce develops a range of location-based products and services for consumers, as well as platform services and local commerce services for the Group’s feature phones and smartphones ([96] in support of our strategic goals) as well as ([96] a portfolio of products for the broader Internet ecosystem, including products for our direct competitors) for other device manufacturers, application developers, Internet service providers, merchants, and advertisers. Location & Commerce also continues to serve NAVTEQ’s existing customers both in terms of provision of content and as a business-to-business provider of map data ([56] providing comprehensive digital map information and related location-based content and services for mobile navigation devices, automotive navigation systems, Internet-based mapping applications and government and business solutions). Location & Commerce has profit and loss responsibility and end-to-end accountability for the full consumer experience.

…

Location & Commerce:

[97] Our Location & Commerce business aims to positively differentiate its digital map data and location-based offerings from those of our competitors and create competitive business models for our customers.

In the fourth quarter 2011, we conducted our annual impairment testing to assess if events or changes in circumstances indicated that the carrying amount of our goodwill may not be recoverable. As a result, we recorded a charge to operating profit of EUR 1.1 billion for the impairment of goodwill in our Location & Commerce business. The impairment charge was the result of an evaluation of the projected financial performance of our Location & Commerce business. This took into consideration the market dynamics in digital map data and related location-based content markets, including our estimate of the market moving long-term from fee-based towards advertising-based models especially in some more mature markets. It also reflected recently announced results and related competitive factors in the local search and advertising market resulting in lower estimated growth prospects from our location-based assets integrated with different advertising platforms. After consideration of all relevant factors, we reduced the net sales projections for Location & Commercewhich, in turn, reduced projected profitability and cash flows.

Location & Commerce’s resources are primarily focused on the development of:

(i) content, which involves the mapping of the physical world and places such as roads and points of interest, as well as the collection of activity data generated and authorized for use by our users;

(ii) the platform, which adds functionality on top of the content and includes the development tools for us and others to create on top of it; and

(iii) applications built on the content and platform.

Our Devices & Services business is a key customer of Location & Commerce. Devices & Services purchases map and application licenses from Location & Commerce for its Nokia Maps service sold in combination with GPS enabled smartphones.

Competition:

[61] With respect to digital map data and related location-based content, several global and local companies, as well as governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, are making more map data with improving coverage and content, and high quality, available free of charge or at lower prices. For example, our Location & Commerce business competes with Googlewhich uses an advertising-based model allowing consumers to use its map data and related services in their products free of charge. Google has continued to leverage Google Maps as a differentiator for Android, bringing certain new features and functionality to that platform. Apple has also sought to strengthen its location assets and capabilities through targeted acquisitions and organic growth.

Location & Commerce also competes with companies such as TomTom, which licenses its map data and where competition is focused on the quality of the map data and pricing, and Open Street Map, which is a community-generated open source map available to users free of charge. Aerial, satellite and other location-based imagery is also becoming increasingly availableand competitors are offering location-based products and services with the map data to both business customers and consumers in order to differentiate their offerings.

Strategy for the trend: Location-Based Products and Services Proliferation

[97] A substantial majority of Location & Commerce net sales in 2011 came from the licensing of digital map data and related location-based content and services for use in mobile devices, in-vehicle navigation systems, Internet applications, geographical information system applications and other location-based products and services. Location & Commerce’s success depends upon the rate at which consumers and businesses use location-based products and services. In recent years, there has been a strong increase in the availability of such products and services, particularly in mobile devices and online application stores for such devices. Furthermore, as the use of the Internet through mobile devices has been growing rapidly, the anchor of the Internet is moving from the desktops to mobiles. This shift is making location-based content a key element of most Internet experiences. We expect this trend to continue, but we also expect that the level of qualityrequired for these products and services and the ability to charge license fees for the use of map data incorporated into such products and services may vary significantly. By combining our NAVTEQ business with our Devices & Services social location services operations, we believe our Location & Commerce business will be better positioned to capture emerging business opportunities with a broader offering which is no longer limited to digital map data.

Strategy for the trend: Increasing Importance of Creating an Ecosystem around Location-Based Services Offering

[97] Creating a winning ecosystem around our Location & Commerce’s services offering will be critical for the success of this business. The longer-term success of the Location & Commerce business will be determined by ourability to attract strategic partners and developers to support our ecosystem. Location & Commerce is aiming to support its ecosystem by enabling strategic partners and independent developers to foster innovation on top of their location platform. We believe that making it possible for other vendors to innovate on top of Location & Commerce’s high quality location-based assets will further strengthen the overall experience and make our offering stronger and more attractive.

Strategy for the trend: Emergence of the Intelligent Sensor Network

[98] Mobile Internet devices are increasingly being enabled with a rich set ofsensors such as a GPS, a camera and an accelerometer which enable interaction with the real world. This interaction also enables the collection of large volumes of rich data which, when combined with analytics, enable the development of increasingly sophisticated, contextually-aware devices and services. We believe the combination of NAVTEQ with our Devices & Services social location services operations will enable Location & Commerce toparticipate in this industry development and seize new opportunities todeliver new experiences that bridge the virtual with the real world.

Strategy for the trend: Price Pressure for Navigable Map Data Increasing

[98] Location & Commerce’s net sales are also affected by the highly competitive pricing environment. Google is offering turn-by-turn navigation in many countries to its business customers and consumers on certain mobile handsets at no charge to the consumer. While we expect these offerings will increase the adoption of location-based services in the mobile handset industry, we also expect they may lead to additional price pressure from Location & Commerce’s business customers, including handset manufacturers, navigation application developers, wireless carriers andpersonal navigation device (“PND”) manufacturers, which are seeking ways to offer lower-cost or free turn-by-turn navigation to consumers. Turn-by-turn navigation solutions that are free to consumers on mobile devices may alsoput pressure on automotive OEMs and automotive navigation system manufacturers to have lower cost navigation alternatives. This price pressure is expected to result in an increased focus on advertising revenueas a way to supplement or replace license fees for map data.

In response to the pricing pressure, Location & Commerce focuses on offering a digital map database with superior quality, detail and coverage; providingvalue-added services to its customers such as distribution and technical services; enhancing and extending its product offering by adding additional content to its map database, such as 3D landmarks; and providing business customers with alternative business models that are less onerous to the business customer than those provided by competitors. Location & Commerce’s future results will also depend on Location & Commerce’s abilityto adapt its business models to generate increasing amounts of advertising revenuesfrom its map and other location-based content.

We believe that Location & Commerce’s PND customers will continue to face competitive pressure from smartphones and other mobile devices that now offer navigation, but that PNDs continue to offer a viable option for consumers based on the functionality, user interface, quality and overall ease of use.

Strategy for the trend: Quality and Richness of Location-Based Content and Services Will Continue to Increase

[98] Location & Commerce’s profitability is also driven by Location & Commerce’s expenses related to the development of its database and expansion. Location & Commerce’s development costs are comprised primarily of the purchase and licensing of source maps, employee compensation and thirdparty feesrelated to the construction, maintenance and delivery of its database.

In order to remain competitive and notwithstanding the price pressure discussed above, Location & Commerce will need to continue to expand the geographic scope of its map data, maintain the quality of its existing map data and add an increasing amount of new location-based content and services, as well as using innovative ways like crowd sourcing to collect data. The trends for such location-based content and services include real-time updates to location information, more dynamic information, such as traffic, weather, events and parking availability, and imagery consistent with the real world. We expect that these requirements will cause Location & Commerce’s map development expenses to continue to grow, although a number of productivity initiatives are underway designed to improve the efficiency of our database collection processing and delivery. In addition, we will need to continue making investments in this fast paced and innovative location-based content and services industry, for instance through research and development, licensing arrangements, acquiring businesses and technologies, recruiting specialized expertise and partnering with third parties.

Restructuring in accordance with all that:

[F-64] In September 2011, Nokia announced a plan to concentrate the development efforts of the Location & Commerce business in Berlin, Germany and Boston and Chicago in the U.S., and other supporting sites and plans toclose its operations in Bonn, Germany and Malvern, U.S. As a result, Location & Commerce recognized a restructuring provision of EUR 25 million.