What if Apple buys Nokia's HERE?

It is no secret that Nokia is pondering the sale of its HERE division. The Finnish company wants to focus on the telecommunications market, and HERE, which offers location services, mapping and navigation software, seems to be nothing but extra weight to lug around. Seeing as a sale is inevitable, the question is, who is going to buy it?

A rumor that's floating around now suggests that Nokia has pitched the sale of HERE to Apple, among other companies. The Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation would certainly stand to benefit from acquiring the technology that powers HERE, as its own attempt at offering navigation software to iOS users has not gone particularly well. Such a purchase, while extremely interesting for Apple, would have deep implications for HERE's current clients, which will most certainly not be favored by it. Here's what it could entail.

Even though it is used by many companies across the globe, and touches a significant number of consumers, HERE is not hugely profitable. In the final quarter of 2014, net sales topped just $292 million, with an operating profit of a mere $20 million. For a company as hugely profitable as Apple, that is chump change. Let's put things into perspective.

During the same time last year, Apple posted record revenue and profit of $74.6 billion and $18 billion, respectively. The $20 million that HERE generated as profit is about 0.11 percent of Apple's profit for the quarter. The reason why I am mentioning this is this: Apple has (virtually) nothing to gain by running HERE in the same way as Nokia.

Unless Apple wants to conquer the location and mapping market -- which doesn't make sense, given the irrelevant financial gains and Apple's business model -- it will have no interest licensing HERE technology to all current HERE customers. And it will also have no interest keeping HERE available for those not using Apple products.

Currently, prominent HERE customers and partners include the likes of Amazon, Microsoft (Bing), SAP and Yahoo. Also, Nokia notes that in Q4 2014 alone it had sold licenses for 3.9 million new vehicles. Those contracts likely stipulate that HERE must provide map updates, something which Apple would have to take upon itself to provide.

Given that Apple is pushing CarPlay in the automotive market, what would make sense for the company is to bundle HERE with CarPlay, which could boost sales of iPhones in the process. This is a desired outcome. It would certainly make more sense than simply licensing HERE and earning just enough money to change the lightbulbs in its new campus when they break (I may be over-exaggerating).

But, let's go back to the customers and partners bit. Apple being Apple, it would want to eliminate any advantage that its rivals have from leveraging HERE. And that would mean cutting any ties with Microsoft, among others. Bing, Windows and Windows Phone (and the future Windows 10 for phones) make use of HERE technology to power core functionality, like mapping and navigation.

While Siri does use Bing to power search results, I do not see Apple allowing Microsoft to strengthen its dominance in the PC market and gain more market share in the mobile market with the help of HERE. It makes little sense for Apple to set itself up for shooting itself in the foot.

Someone might be tempted to bring Beats into discussion. While it is indeed true that Beats is an Apple-owned service that is also available on a rival platform, being integrated into a future iOS release and removed from Google Play afterwards is not out of the question.

Apple wants consumers to focus on the added value/benefits of its products, and one way it is doing that is by not launching products on rival platforms. iTunes is an exception, not the rule. How many fresh products has Apple launched on Android or Windows in recent years? Zero.

Moving back to HERE again, the way that I see Apple taking advantage of it is by integrating the new technology in its Maps apps on iOS and OS X, and providing better location services to developers to integrate into their iOS and OS X apps.

Instead of going with Google's Maps, and paying the search giant for this, they could have the solid, quite possibly free, option that is HERE technology. Apple would directly gain/lose little, financially speaking, from this, but it would certainly be a major benefit for developers, which could see their profits go up as a result.

Meanwhile, users would have more confidence in using Apple's own mapping and navigation software, which would certainly make them rely less on Google and its Maps. Come to think of it, if Apple would buy HERE, this might hurt Google more than Microsoft. It's certainly food for thought.