- Apple needs more patents to cover its wireless roadmap for the next decade and keep Samsung at bay. Nokia has one of the best and youngest sets of patents around LTE and other 4G wireless technologies. Apple settled out-of-court with Nokia in 2011, a deal Louis hears brought Nokia $500 million and a royalty in the range of $5 to $7 per iPhone, a 1% tax by the Finnish company. The patent portfolio is worth anywhere from $6 billion to $10 billion. Nokia’s market cap today is $10 billion.
- Maps. Apple is way behind here and Nokia has some of the best location software and databases in the industry from its 2007 Navteq deal. Why build when you can buy a distressed Nokia for about the same price ($8 billion) that Nokia (over)paid for Navteq? Companies such as Google, RIM, Microsoft, Amazon and Samsung all depend in some way on Navteq maps, giving Apple new leverage over those other companies.
- Wireless TV. Nokia has good technology for delivering live TV to wireless devices, and TV is an area everyone is betting Apple moves into.
- Knock Microsoft on its heels. Nokia is one of Microsoft’s bigger, if not the biggest, partners for Windows Phone, especially at the high-end with the new Nokia Lumia handsets. Assuming there wouldn’t be any antitrust claims leveled by Microsoft (and wouldn’t that be ironic) Apple could squelch whatever progress Microsoft has struggled to secure in mobile.
- Apple would do a deal as a double-reverse with a flip. It can buy the patents and some software engineering (more like what Google did with Motorola) and flip the rest to a telecom equipment maker such as Alcatel-Lucent (likeliest) or Siemens, Nokia’s current wireless-equipment JV partner.
With a market cap of $10 billion for Nokia and Apple sitting on a cash pile of over $100 billion, the Cupertino giant could fund this from change it found in its couch. For the reasons listed above, I suspect that Google and Microsoft would also jump into the game, bidding Nokia’s share price further up. But few companies have the buying power Apple has and it would eventually win that fight and, once again, reorder the mobile landscape while solidifying its own control of the future.Read: Why Apple should acquire Nokia, tnl.net
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