Apple is looking on buying a new Maps service, Nokia is looking on selling its entrie "Here" mapping business. According to a report in Bloomberg, Apple is among the potential buyers for Nokia's HERE mapping business.

Other potential buyers of HERE include Alibaba, Amazon, Facebook, Baidu, and a group of German carmakers among others. A number of private equity firms are also said to be interested.

Nokia has been working with a financial advisor on the sale of its mapping unit. The Finnish company is seeking more than €3 billion (about $3.2 billion), with the first bids due to arrive at the end of next week. Nokia has been busy making headlines lately. The company acquired Alcatel-Lucent for €15.6 billion. It is also rumored to return to making phones next year.

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Two of the biggest European communication companies are merging, Today, Nokia will officially acquire Alcatel-Lucent in an all-share transaction valued at €15.6 billion. The deal has been approved by the Board of Directors of each company and is expected to close in the first half of 2016, pending approval by Nokia's shareholders, regulatory bodies and other considerations.

It's important to note that Alcatel-Lucent is not connected to the Alcatel phones other than by name, AL manufactures networking equipment similar to Nokia Networks. With their forces combined, the two will tackle the development of 5G tech, the Internet of Things and the increased reliance on cloud services.

In 2014 there were 40,000 R&D employees (20,000 of which from AL) working on a budget of €4.7 billion combined. Both have strong presence in the US, Europe, China and the Asia pacific and work on anything from core networks to cell networks. For last year, the combined sales of the two companies comes out to €25.9 billion with a non-IFRS profit of €2.3 billion.

The company will be called Nokia Corporation and keep the headquarters in Finland (but with a strong presence in France). Current Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri will keep his postion in the new company, Chairman Risto Siilasmaa will keep his post too.

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Nokia's first Android tablet, Nokia N1, is doing well in China. Nokia N1 went on sale in China today, and the Finnish company exhausted the initial batch of 20,000 units in record time. It only took 4 minutes and 2 seconds to go through all that inventory. It's important to mention that the Tablet is running Android 5.0 Lollipop out-of-the-box.

It looks like Nokia chose to go the flash sale route, perhaps inspired by Xiaomi's success with this model. The next opportunity to buy the N1 will come on January 15th, if you're in China of course. Otherwise, you will have to wait longer as the N1 isn't yet available anywhere else.

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Good News for Android users, as Nokia HERE app is now Available for FREE on Google Play. What is HERE ?. Well, it's the famed mapping service that is still under Nokia's wing, which provides its users with completely offline navigation, has a wide array of available maps, up-to-date info for public transportation, as well as turn-by-turn voice guidance all of this free of charge.

Up until now, the app was only available for Samsung devices on one of Samsung's online app repositories. Apart from arriving on Google Play, HERE Beta also adds navigation support for plenty of new countries (Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Cyprus, Iraq, Libya, Mauritania, Mauritius, Nepal, Paraguay, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Zambia, Zimbabwe), though these countries have not been fully-mapped just yet.

Nokia Here [Play Store]

Nokia announced its first lollipop tablet, Nokia N1 last month with its own UI on top which called the Nokia Z Launcher. Well, lucky enough, the Nokia Z Launcher is still in BETA stages and has been updated to version 1.0.5 with some bug fixes and now works on more devices.

The Launcher learns from your usage and picks up contextual cues (e.g. whether it's morning or evening), but the feature that sets it apart is scribbling.

Instead of having to hunt down the right shortcut though an alphabetized list, you just your finger to write the first letter and the Z Launcher will display matching apps sorted by how much you use each one of them.

The Z Launcher on the Lollipop-running Nokia N1 tablet is an exclusive version, but you can download the BETA generic version 1.0.5 from the APK link below for a small taste of the experience engineered by Nokia.

Nokia Z Launcher 1.0.5 [APK]