Nokia will supply maps and navigation services to Yahoo and the Web company will provide e-mail and chat to the world’s top mobile phone maker under a partnership announced on Monday.
Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz and Nokia CEO Oli-Pekka Kallasvuo said the co-branded services would be available starting from the second half of this year and globally next year.
As part of the “strategic alliance,” terms of which were not disclosed, Nokia will be the exclusive global provider of Yahoo’s map and navigation services, while its “Ovi Maps” will be integrated across Yahoo properties.
“We’re definitely behind on maps,” Bartz said at a launch event in New York with Kallasvuo. “We just didn’t put the engineering power on it that we should have three years ago.”
“We believe Nokia’s strength and continued investment in maps and navigation will greatly enhance our existing products, enabling us to focus on areas that are core to our business,” she said.
Bartz said “location has just become such a big part of everything” and Yahoo is pleased to have a partner ready to “substantially invest in that area.”
“Location is a new dimension of the Internet,” Kallasvuo said.
The agreement calls for Yahoo to be the global provider of Nokia’s “Ovi Mail” and “Ovi Chat” services.
“Yahoo’s online expertise will bring exciting mail and messaging enhancements to millions of Ovi Mail customers across almost every country around the world,” Kallasvuo said.
Meanwhile, Yahoo late on Monday announced that it has acquired Koprol, an Indonesian Internet service that lets people use mobile telephones to instantly tap into nearby people and places.
“Users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to communicate and access the Internet and they are looking for seamless integration between those devices and PCs,” said Rose Tsou (鄒開蓮), senior vice president for the Asia Region at Yahoo.
“Koprol was uniquely designed for mobile phones and within a year has already built a strong user base,” she said.
Yahoo planned to use its global presence to introduce Jakarta-based Koprol to other parts of the world. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Koprol lets people “check-in” to locations using Web browsers on mobile phones and then see which other users are nearby and what they are doing, in a fashion similar to US location-based social networks Foursquare and Gowalla.
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