Nokia To Make Lonely Planet Guides Available On Phones

Nokia is wasting no time putting its acquisition of location provider Navteq to good use: on Tuesday it said it is teaming up with travel book supplier Lonely Planet in a deal to sell books and maps to travelers.

Starting Tuesday, users of Nokia Maps can download Lonely Planet content covering more than 100 worldwide destinations. Each download costs $13.99. Nokia Maps already cover more than 200 countries with more than 70 of them navigable. Nokia said the maps can be downloaded over the air to PCs and to selected mobile devices.

Nokia acquired Navteq for $8.1 billion earlier this year. The European Union had held up Nokia's acquisition for months, because it feared the Nokia-Navteq combination would stifle the market. But, in the end, the EU said consumers could also obtain mobile location services from Tom Tom's Tele Atlas.

Nokia noted that its Nokia Maps 2.0 utilizes vector maps from Navteq as well as TeleAtlas.

Stephen Palmer, CEO of Lonely Planet Publications, hailed the deal with Nokia, saying in a statement: "This is a genuinely transformational deal, which makes Lonely Planet readily available regardless of time or place. It will help all those questions which travelers frequently have on the road such as 'What should I explore today?' or 'Where should I go for dinner tonight?'"

Many of the Lonely Planet guides cover cities; Nokia said additional guides will be added on a regular basis.

Nokia has been moving aggressively into location services and earlier this summer acquired Plazes, a German company that enables users to use various navigation aids to link themselves in social networking situations.