After months of negotiation, Nokia sells the HERE Maps division to the German consortium, BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen for $2.71 billion (£1.73 billion).
The deal would see HERE Maps turn into an open platform, which all car manufacturers can use for navigation and mapping inside vehicles. The three German car makers plan to offer the platform to Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Peugeot, Ford, Toyota and General Motors, allowing them to use the mapping service for free without licensing issues.
Nokia is selling the entire unit of HERE, meaning the car consortium will likely continue hiring developers to work on the platform.
Currently, companies like Chinese search giant Baidu and Facebook use HERE Maps to power its own mapping services. It remains to be seen how the new deal will affect those services.
In the initial round of bidding, Nokia failed to convince Uber, Baidu, Alibaba, Facebook and other tech companies to offer the asking price, a whooping $4 billion (£2.56 billion).
