Nokia continues to negotiate the sale of its maps unit to third parties, but now reports claim the Finnish company is closer than ever to reach its goal.
Since Nokia announced that its HERE maps business was up for sale, many companies and consortium groups started to bid on it. However, none has been able to meet Nokia's asking price, which some sources claim to be $4 billion (€3.63 billion).
After numerous bidding sessions, some of the companies interested in acquiring Nokia's maps unit dropped out of the race due to the high asking price, while others made other acquisitions.
Uber announced recently it has bought some of Microsoft's Bing assets and absorbed 100 engineers that will work for its newly acquired maps business.
Other companies gave up on bidding because they felt Nokia already has a favorite buyer in the form of a German consortium of car makers, which contains companies like BMW, Daimler AG and Audi AG.
Apparently, there rumors were completely accurate as Bloomberg now reports that sources familiar with the negotiations claim that Nokia is very close to announcing the sale of its maps business.
The German carmakers would be the buyer of HERE for around $2.7 billion (€2.5 billion), which is far from Nokia's asking price from a few months ago, if rumors were true.
According to the same sources, an agreement could be reached as early as next week, so an official announcement should drop around July 31.
The deal could still fail if one of the parties is not content with aspects of the agreement
Still, negotiations could fall apart just as easy as the German consortium hammers out the details, including intellectual property rights, sources claim.
Daimler AG, owner of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are fierce competitors on the luxury car market, which makes this alliance for the acquisition of Nokia HERE maps business quite unique.
This means that the German carmakers are really interested in getting Nokia's maps unit that they are willing to drop any rivalries.