Nokia has a history of acquiring companies in different domains than just hardware. A few years ago it acquired Navtec, a digital mapping company for $8.1 billion. This time it has acquired Dopplr, a travel based social network for an undisclosed amount.
Dopplr lets a user connect with similar location visiting users or past visitors of that location. The users could also explore the restaurants and other point of interest through the service. The Social portal even has an iPhone App to facilitate mobility of use and that may have drawn attention of the Mobile giant.
Nokia off-lately has been facing serious threats from the likes of Apple’s iPhone, Blackberry and other competitors likePalm. The strategy of acquiring small social media based application is largely played by Nokia to provide VAS integration on to its Mobiles. The acquisition of Dopplr can help the company to provide close-knit integration of social networking based services with its hardware thus playing a value addition approach to thwart competition.
Recently Vodafone introduced ‘Vodafone 360’ services in UK to facilitate easy access of social networking services on mobile. The proliferation of social networking services on mobile is largely attributed to app availability across platforms and increased subscribership of such social networks. Facebook recently notified that more than 65 million people actively using Facebook on their mobile devices.
It would be interesting to know how Nokia can leverage Dopplr to its advantage. It could either expand the services of Dopplr to give it a more global reach and may use it to provide Local search services by integrating GPS features on to this service. Nokia recently acquired nascent social services from Plum Ventures which allows sharing of moments through pictures with secured contacts.
Nokia has also been active in Mobi-internet and VAS services through OVI store. The success of OVI store is largely undue and may take much more time for benefits to start accruing in.
Therefore, Nokia through this small service acquisition may be looking at providing much more feature additions to mobiles than just hardware improvements as iPhone App downloads have clearly demonstrated the popularity attained by those services.
