Summit Notebook

Winning a big deal to supply Google with maps for mobile phones would trump Nokia‘s attempts to win over pedestrians with cellphone maps, regardless of the Finnish cellphone giant’s $8 billion acquisition of map maker Navteq, according to rival map maker Tele Atlas. “Is it more relevant in the pedestrian world that we are… owned by TomTom or is it more relevant that we have a big customer that is called Google?” said TeleAtlas CEO Alain de Taeye when asked whether he was intimidated by the prospective Nokia-Navteq combination. Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris, De Taeye said it was false to assume that there were now only four players in the navigation world: Nokia, Navteq, TomTom and Tele Atlas, when Nokia considered Google one of its main competitors. Both Navteq and Tele Atlas — the only two global digital map makers — supply Google.