MNB RG: Will cars soon be tracked by Nokia black boxes? Jorma Ollila heads a car tracking taskforce

Apologies to Janne for missing these tips. Been in a total rush whilst on this Paediatrics placement.

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One answer to what gadgets will Nokia/HERE serve us after the Microsoft deal is completed, may come in the form of Nokia’s former chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila’s current hobby: heading a parliamentary taskforce in Finland on GPS car tracking, taxation and related government and roadside infrastructure. The plan is that all cars in Finland will eventually connect to the eye in the sky and to big brother using small, maybe 30 euro devices carried on board.

Not only is Jorma’s little team involved in charting the highly controversial future of GPS based car taxation/rushhour payments and the like, the work is also broaching the broader subject of traffic, location and data networks – real-time traffic information, control, planning, collision prevention etc. Something Jorma Ollila’s group now says will be a big market in the future. And of course, while chair-manning Nokia, Jorma Ollila was behind the NAVTEQ acquisition and what is now known as Nokia’s HERE strategy. Lately Nokia has been adamant about keeping HERE in their core, instead of spinning it off to a separate company or selling it… Location, location, location.

A globally less known fact is that Nokia has been intimately involved in many of Finland’s nationalinfrastructure projects, pioneering technology in military (until recently Finnish army used Nokia-made communications equipment), television and of course telecommunications. The latest such advancement outside of phones was the national move to DVB digital television broadcasting a decade or so ago. While Nokia moved away from it later, many of the initial digital television set-top boxes in Finland were made by Nokia. And Nokia also (unsuccessfully) tried to advance the mobile DVB-H infrastructure adoption in Finland.

Will every car in Finland, maybe Europe, soon have a Nokia box on the dash in the future? Will NSN make the network that follows your every move?

Related links:

Robocars, backseat fun, satnav 2.0: Meet the bit of Nokia Microsoft didn’t buy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/24/new_nokia_devices_whynot/

Jorma Ollila autoverosta: ”Kehittyvät markkinat eivät odota Suomen päätöksiä”
http://www.uusisuomi.fi/raha/63206-jorma-ollila-autoverosta-kehittyvat-markkinat-eivat-odota-suomen-paatoksia

Oldie but useful - MNB RG: How Nokia Location drives Audi
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/07/19/mnb-rg-how-nokia-location-drives-audi/

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Cheers Janne for the tip!

Category: Nokia