Wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to buy TomTom or Waze before buying Nokia? TomTom is much cheaper and Apple already has a cozy relationship with it. Not to mention Nokia is already in bed with Microsoft.<p>NOK: $10B market cap
TOM2: $800M market cap<p>Even then, TomTom comes with a lot of baggage. A savvy operations expert like Tim Cook would choke in disgust at the financial waste of such an acquisition.<p>Apple acquiring Waze makes the most sense. It only has 80 employees already in Palo Alto. It is still private and only has $67M in funding. Its only product is a mobile app. And its product is actually an advancement for navigation rather than stuck in the old world.
Has Apple ever made any acquisition even a portion this size? It would be a pretty big difference between Jobs Apple and Cook Apple to make a purchase this big.
Given that the likely targets would be maps and patents, the rest of the business wouldn't be of much value surely? But winding up a company Nokia's size would be a brutal hit that would inflict a lot of damage in many different areas - to Apple almost as much as Nokia I'd guess.<p>Edit: Auto predict. Sigh
Seems like a popular blog title:
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-apple-should-acquire-nokia-2012-10" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/why-apple-should-acquire-noki...</a>
<a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/194130/why-apple-should-buy-nokia-to-fix-their-mapping-disaster/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cultofmac.com/194130/why-apple-should-buy-nokia-t...</a>
Nice article. A formatting nit: Having link hovers italicize means that hovering a link reflows the entire paragraph.<p>Example: <a href="http://makeagif.com/i/6KTHGR" rel="nofollow">http://makeagif.com/i/6KTHGR</a>
I actually think they should acquire a carrier like tmobile... They always say they want to control "the entire customer experience from hardware to software".
If the rumours are true about Nokia wanting to sell off their HQ in Finland, it seems Nokia is a bit desperate for money.<p>This could mean at some point (in the interests of getting some cash in the bank) Nokia could sell off their mapping division (NAVTEQ etc) to Apple.