Tele Atlas buyout by TomTom okayed by EC, putting Navteq in play

In a move that might or might not impact Google, Yahoo, and mobile providers, the European Commission has given its approval to TomTom's $4.5 billion bid to buy map maker Tele Atlas.

In confidential documents leaked this week, European regulators suggested they see a proposed $8.1 billion merger between those two companies as similar to -- but different from -- the TomTom/Tele Atlas deal just approved.

Along with Tele Atlas, Navteq is one of the only two producers of navigable maps offering complete coverage of North America and Europe. Navteq's customers happen to include Google, in addition to Yahoo and providers of mobile phones and GPS devices.

Meanwhile, Nokia -- the company that wants to buy Navteq -- has been surging ahead with new Internet services such as the location-based Nokia Maps, at the same time loudly proclaiming Google, Apple, and Microsoft to be newfound competitors as Nokia transitions into an "Internet company."

As previously reported in BetaNews, at the end of March, the EC issued a statement announcing a detailed investigation into Nokia's planned buyout of Navteq and voicing concerns that the deal might "in the light of the duopoly market for navigable digital maps and Nokia's strong position [in] the market for mobile handsets, lead to a significant impediment of competition."

But in the same statement, the EC also said that the Nokia/Navteq merger brought up issues along the same lines as those involved in the TomTom/Tele Atlas deal, a business arrangement then already under "detailed investigation" by the regulatory agency.

It has now come to light that the EC conveyed the same mixed message in "confidential" questionnaires sent out to customers and competitors of Nokia, and leaked by Reuters this week.

"Although the two transactions involve largely the same markets...the merger regulation obliges the Commission to investigate separately the Nokia/Navteq merger," regulators said in a questionnaire dated in February. "[But] if you responded to the market investigation in the TomTom/Tele Atlas case, you can provide the same answers by 'copying and pasting' the submission you made on that occasion."

On the other hand, though, the EC used a longer questionnaire for the Nokia/Navteq case, containing questions that weren't included on the document that needed to be filled out for the TomTom/Tele Atlas merger.

In one of these extra questions, the commission asked competitors whether there was any "conflict...with regard to the inclusion of a specific service that your company would have wanted to embed into its handset."

Earlier this month, Nokia inked a deal with T-Mobile to provide Internet services for mobile customers in Germany. Nokia had previously signed similar deals with France Telecom, Spain's Telefonics, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone. But T-Mobile had initially hesitated about teaming with Nokia on the Internet services.

Now that the TomTom/Tele Atlas deal has been approved, the EC faces a deadline of August 8 for deciding whether the Nokia/Navteq agreement would "significantly impede effective competition within the EEA or a significant part of it."