Nokia today acquired a social networking site for travelers in its third complementary, boutique tech firm purchase in the past month.
The latest firm to join the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) family is Dopplr, which has a staff of seven and offices in London and Helsinki. Using the company’s “social atlas,” Dopplr members share travel plans, tips and advice within private social networks either on a PC or mobile phone.
“The Dopplr team brings to Nokia’s Services unit unique know-how in creating Internet-based communities and showing their journeys, experiences and tastes collectively on the Web,” Nokia said in a statement.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Nokia shares our vision of the Social Atlas, the idea that social location data can improve our experience of cities. The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated, like Flickr and Twitter,” Dopplr CEO Marko Ahtisaari said in a post on the company blog.
It’s the latest acquisition for Nokia, which is looking to beef up its mobile services.
Earlier this month, Navteq, the Chicago-based Nokia subsidiary that provides digital maps, traffic and location data for wireless devices and vehicles, scooped up Acuity Mobile, whose embedded mobile advertising platform enables location-targeted advertising. Terms were not disclosed.
The purchase of Acuity followed Nokia’s acquisition in the previous week of Plum, a private social networking site with about 12 employees based in Boston and San Francisco.
The additions come as Nokia shores up its position in the competitive wireless sector as it undergoes a transformation from phone maker to what Kai Oistamo, vice president of devices for Nokia, calls a “mobile solutions provider.”
Nokia’s spending spree on mobile tech firms coincides with the company’s efforts to solidify itself as the global leader in mobile phone market share. While Nokia is the world’s largest phone maker, it’s being forced to contend with the growing threat of rivals like the Apple iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices, who have both outpaced Nokia in the U.S.
It’s also ramping up expansion beyond smartphones to try to grow in areas where Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) have yet to tread.
These include the Nokia Booklet 3G netbook, the N900, a wireless device running on Maemo 5, and a new series of music-oriented smartphones.
It also ramped up efforts in the mobile app space by making it easier for developers to code new applications for its family of devices by issuing a new Ovi SDK.
In August, Nokia partnered with Microsoft in a deal that will begin by porting Office Mobile applications to run on the Symbian mobile OS.