When it was announced last July that TomTom would acquire Tele Atlas for €1.8 billion, Navteq was widely seen as the next acquisition target. The only question was, by whom. The answer is Nokia, which announced today that it was acquiring Navteq for a purchase price of $8.1 billion (via Engadget). See also the Wall Street Journal’s coverage, issued before the announcement (via Ed Parsons).

If you were wondering why a mobile phone company and not an Internet company like Google or Yahoo, consider the data from the slides accompanying the announcement (via All Points Blog) — “Internet and wireless” make up only five per cent of Navteq’s revenues, compared with 25 per cent from mobile devices and a whopping 62 per cent from in-dash navigation systems. Google Maps and its ilk are a very small part of a digital mapping data provider’s business.