$8.1 Billion

Directions Magazine reports that NAVTEQ just sold for $8.1 Billion. As a location-based service, that really indicates how quickly this field has grown and how valued geospatial technology has become. In buying NAVTEQ, Nokia paid 14 times the 2006 earnings which means they are paying a premium for growth and utility, not just strict property or short-term investment (unless they are blindly buying at the top of the bubble, which is a different post). Directions helps explain why this creates such value for companies like Nokia:

The "Holy Grail" for location technology is assumed to be local search and the advertising that comes with it. The goal is to reach an ever-narrowing target audience within a confined geography. Wild estimates of advertising dollars (1) (2) are predicted to be spent on local search. For mere pennies, "mom and pop" retailers will be able to reach their loyal and less-than-loyal customers more effectively. Those pennies will create billions of transactions, and therefore dollars, for Internet giants like Google, cellular carriers like Sprint, and their new friends in the mobile handset market like Nokia.

Geomatics is here. It is now. It is huge. $8.1 billion huge.