14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia has just announced that it has reached an agreement with Plazes, a German social-activity service provider, according to which, the Finnish company will buy Plazes and its assets. Headquartered in Berlin, Plazes is currently a privately-owned company (with only 13 employees) that offers a context-aware service that allows users to better organize their social activities by planning, recording and sharing them.
With the acquisition of the Berlin-based company, Nokia wants to extend its service portfolio even more. Plazes will bring Nokia new features, like time-based activity coordinating ones. Social networking can be improved by Plazes with the "place" and "time" elements that enable people to: inform other users about their location and activity; review personal activities or friends' activities; share and plan activities or experiences with friends.
Talking about the new deal, Niklas Savander, Head of Nokia Services & Software, said, "This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy. In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area."
Felix Petersen, co-founder of Plazes, added, "Nokia shares our vision of the social activity space and of how we can together develop the service that Plazes provides today. We feel proud of what the Plazes team has achieved so far with its pioneering work in context-aware services and we feel even more excited about what's to come next."
The financial details of the Plazes acquisition were not made public, but Nokia said that the deal should be completed in the third quarter of the year, when Plazes will be a part of the Nokia Services & Software department.