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All Roads Lead to Espoo: Amazon (AMZN) Picks Nokia (NOK) Maps for Next Kindle Fire, Will Add GPS

August 31, 2012 3:08 PM EDT
Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) is most well known for being a leading e-commerce retail pioneer, but dd you also know it sold a media tablet?

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is best known for being a Finnish mobile phone giant. But, did you also know it had a pretty sophisticated mapping business segment?

Both of these unusual circumstances are about to come together, as Amazon opted to use Nokia's cartography skills in its upcoming Kindle Fire tablet. The move is a snub to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), which also has a popular mapping program in Google Maps. No map application was included in the previous version of the Kindle Fire, meaning users had to surf to Google Maps if the needed directions.

In addition to the map addition, Amazon will be enhancing its next Kindle Fire with location capabilities, which would require a GPS chip.

It's not clear why Amazon chose Nokia over Google. Earlier in 2012, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) made a similar move, cutting out Google in favor of its own, internally-made mapping program for iOS 6.

Nokia made a huge leap in the mapping category with the $5.7 billion acquisition of Navteq in 2007. Shares of Nokia re up 2.2 percent in late-trading Friday.


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