Nokia has just announced it’s completed the acquisition of earthmine, a 3D street-level imaging specialist. Nokia has previously said it plans to use earthmine’s technology to bolster its digital mapping service — with the earthmine team joining Nokia’s Location and Commerce business division. Terms of the acquisition have not been announced. The transaction had been expected to close by the end of 2012.
earthmine’s “reality capture and processing technologies” will be integrated into Nokia’s freshly rebranded maps — now called Here — to better compete with rival 3D mapping offerings such as Google Earth and Google’s Street View.
Nokia’s Here Maps iOS app went live on the iTunes Store yesterday. There’s no word on when earthmine’s 3D capabilities will be added to Here as yet.
Commenting in a statement when the acquisition was announced last week, John Ristevski, co-CEO of earthmine, said: “We are very excited to be joining Nokia – a company with a huge presence and vision in mapping. We could not hope for a better place to fulfill and accelerate our mission of indexing the world in 3D.”