Nokia Buys Social Addressbook Startup Cellity For The Team

German mobile startup Cellity is getting acquired by Nokia. The sale price was not disclosed, but it is not likely to be more than $10 million to $20 million. The deal was all cash. About a year ago, Vodafone bought Cellity’s competitor Zyb for 31.5 million Euros.

Nokia didn’t actually buy the whole company, only “certain assets” and the team, which is usually code for a fire sale. The company began talking to Nokia six months ago, and in the end there was actually a little bit of a bidding war with Netherlands mobile carrier KPN and an international web portal. Cellity had a Series A round of funding in 2007, led by Mangrove Capital Partners.

Cellity’s service is a social addressbook for mobile phones which which syncs your contact list on your phone with your contacts on the Web, including Outlook, Twitter, AOL, Hotmail, Yahoomail, Gmail, Plaxo and LinkedIn. Nokia won’t be continuing Cellity’s Addressbook 2.0 service, but it stands to reason the team will build similar functionality from scratch for future Nokia phones. Or perhaps they will work on new projects. The team will become part of Nokia’s Services division in Berlin, which also houses other startup acquisitions Plazes and bit-side.