Nokia Continues Acquisition – Analyst Blog

Nokia Corp. (NOK), the largest mobile phone manufacturer of the world, acquires privately held Motally Inc, an in-application tracking and reporting and mobile browsing analytics service provider. Acquisition of Motally will enable application developers and publishers to track their applications on any Nokia handsets. This will help application developers to optimize their development process through better understanding of customer usage.

 

Nokia has decided to incorporate Motally’s analytics services for Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, and JAVA developers, while continuing to service Motally’s existing customers base. Motally has a large customer base since its application tracker supports major mobile phone operating systems (OS). This includes Apple Inc’s (AAPL) iOS, Research In Motion Ltd’s (RIMM) BlackBerry OS, and Google Inc’s (GOOG) Android OS.

 

For last one year, Nokia has been trying very hard to revamp its smartphone segment which is gradually losing market share to iPhone, BlackBerry, and several Andriod-based mobile phones. In March 2010, Nokia acquired Novarra Inc that specializes in developing high speed mobile web browsers. Novarra’s offerings include full rich web browsing, search, widgets, apps, video and advertising.

 

In August 2009, Nokia purchased Dopplr Oy, a privately held social-network service provider for mobile devices. Dopplr provided technical know-how to Nokia in creating internet-based communities and showing their journeys, experiences and tastes collectively on the web.

 

Nokia has decided to provide more value-added services to maintain its leadership position. The company started offering free music- downloading services called “Comes with Music”. Nokia is now integrating this service with its Ovi services suite. “Comes with Music” is mainly targeting emerging markets like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and Indonesia.

 

Nokia is currently a short-term Zacks #3 Rank (Hold) stock. We also maintain our long-term Neutral recommendation for Nokia.