Nokia Acquires Dopplr (This Time For Real!)
Marko Ahtisaari, the CEO of Dopplr, has just posted a blog post on the Dopplr Blog that Nokia indeed has acquired the company. Furthermore, Nokia has confirmed this with their own press release. Last week we quoted on ArcticStartup a rumour originating from Techcrunch that Nokia has acquired them. This stirred up a lot of publicity and since no party confirmed the rumour and one of the co-founders stated the deal was fabricated - we were under mixed messages and were unable to decide which side is right.
Ahtisaari writes on the Dopplr blog, "Today, we’re thrilled to announce that Dopplr has been acquired by Nokia. Nokia shares our vision of the Social Atlas, the idea that social location data can improve our experience of cities." So Nokia is after the location based services here with the acquisition. They continue on the track proven by the purchase of Plazes. Although it is yet difficult to state how these services will form in the future.
What makes this interesting even further, is the fact that Nokia states in their press release "The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated." So does this mean they won't have any big plans regarding the service or that they are buying the IPR behind Dopplr with this acquisition? Beats me, but congrats to the Dopplr team nevertheless! Wonderful job and a good pay back for the investors in this business climate.
Update (14.25, 28.9.2009): According to Helsingin Sanomat, the the price paid for the acquisition is dramatically smaller than the initially rumoured 10-15 million euros.
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on Dopplr being acquired by Nokia...
Ok.. so the companies (finally, perhaps?) today confirmed that Nokia did indeed acquire Dopplr.
Here's the blog entry from Dopplr:
http://blog.dopplr.com/2009/09/28/nokia-acquires-dopplr/
And the press release from Nokia:
http://www.nokia.com/pre...
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