Nokia Snaps Up MetaCarta To Expand Location Services

Details on how Nokia plans to integrate MetaCarta's technology were scant Friday. In a statement, Nokia said that it will "be used in the area of local search in location and other services."

MetaCarta's two principal software offerings are Geosearch, which organizes and presents information about a particular location, and Geotag, which extracts geographic information from Web content for use in other applications, such as maps.

Location-aware services have become a renewed focus for Nokia as it looks to expand those capabilities for its mobile phones. Back in January, Nokia updated Ovi Maps, and said in early February that the new version had been downloaded more than 1.4 million times in the span of two weeks. Among Ovi Maps' newer features were turn-by-turn GPS navigation.

Nokia has also been busy on the M&A front lately. On Friday, it confirmed that it had completed its acquisition of Novarra, a move first announced on March 26. Novarra is a mobile browser and services platform that according to Nokia will "deliver enhanced Internet experiences on Nokia Series 40 mobile phones."