14 DAY TRIAL // Autonomous cars seem to be the future of transportation as more and more companies invest billions of dollars in this side of the industry, and now software giant Microsoft is considering doing the same with a minority stake in HERE.
German car manufacturer Daimler has recently confirmed that both Microsoft and Amazon are interested in buying a stake in HERE, the mapping solution that it purchased in December, together with a group of other German automobile makers, from Nokia for #3 billion (€2.8 billion).
While Microsoft could thus obtain a minority stake in the company, the main goal is to provide the mapping solution with cloud capabilities that would eventually help the development of an autonomous vehicle.
“We are talking to Amazon, Microsoft and many auto makers,” Thomas Weber, a Daimler board member in charge of research and development, was quoted as saying by Reuters. “We need a cloud provider to handle the huge amounts of data created by HERE and its users. We haven’t taken any decisions yet.”
A Google rival
Microsoft and Google are already competing in a big number of businesses, and if the software giant indeed takes a stake in HERE, the two can become rivals in what seems to be a rapid developing side of the industry that has already attracted investments of billions of dollars from large companies across the world.
Google is already conducting tests across the United States with its autonomous vehicles and results are already encouraging while companies such as General Motors and Uber are also preparing plans to step into this market.
Microsoft has never said it specifically, but it’s very clear that autonomous vehicles is an interesting business for the company that’s looking to expand beyond software, and a stake in HERE pretty much makes sense.
HERE is the provider of mapping data in Microsoft’s apps and recently announced the decision to remove its stand-alone apps from Windows and Windows Phone stores. The collaboration between Microsoft and HERE, however, continues, and a deal that would eventually lead to the creation of an autonomous vehicle is just the logical next step to do for both sides.