Business news with words announced+billion+nokia. 3 news.

GARMIN Ltd, the world's largest maker of personal navigation devices, unveiled an unsolicited US$3.3 billion takeover offer for Dutch digital map maker Tele Atlas NV yesterday, topping an offer by rival TomTom NV by 15 percent. Tele Atlas, which had endorsed the TomTom bid, said it was now reviewing its options. A TomTom spokesman declined to comment while the company studies the US$35.31 per share Garmin bid. TomTom shares plunged 12 percent to US$86.33, while Tele Atlas shares rose 14 percent to US$39.34, signaling that some investors are speculating the bidding will go higher. TomTom began a rush to consolidate the high-growth digital mapping industry when it said it would buy Tele Atlas for US$30.63 per share in July. On October 1, mobile phone maker Nokia Corp announced an US$8.1 billion bid for the only other global digital map maker, Navteq Corp. Both TomTom and Nokia plan to tightly integrate the maps into the design of their navigation devices and phones, and

Where is the navigation industry heading? MEN, the stereotype has it, never ask for directions. Now many of them have an excuse, in the form of a portable navigation device (PND). Nearly 35m of these hand-held or dashboard-mounted units will be sold around the world this year, twice as many as in 2006 (see chart), making personal navigation one of the fastest-growing areas in consumer electronics. The latest versions of these gadgets do more than simply show the stubborn or shy the way. The industry is beginning to focus on the services PNDs could provide, prompting a scramble for the ownership of the digital maps they use. Proof of this shift came on October 1st, when Nokia, the world's largest mobile-phone maker, said that it would acquire Navteq, the world's biggest maker of digital maps, for EURO5.7 billion ($8.1 billion) in cash--a heady sum for a company with only $362m in revenues and $71m in net income in the first half of this year. In July, TomTom, a leading PND vendor from the Netherlands, announced plans to buy Tele Atlas, the next biggest mapmaker, for EURO1.8 billion.

Nokia Corp., the world's largest mobile phone maker, announced Monday that it would buy U.S. navigation-software maker Navteq Corp. for around US$8.1 billion (euro5.68 billion).