Nokia To Buy Mobile Analytics Specialist

Nokia, the world’s leading handset maker, on Aug. 20 announced plans to acquire Motally, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company.

In a statement, Nokia described Motally as offering a better understanding of how users engage with applications, thereby enabling developers and publishers to optimise their creations.

Currently eight employees strong, Motally offers two primary solutions—mobile Web analytics technology that identifies user visits to mobile Websites and collects information about the visit; and application analytics technology that can track mobile applications, offer granular reporting, and control what, when and how to send tracking events, according to the Motally Website. The latter currently supports iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android handsets.

Mobile Web Browsing

According to Nokia, there are plans to adapt the Motally offering for Qt, Symbian, MeeGo—the Linux-based mobile OS that Nokia jointly introduced with Intel in February—and Java developers, though Motally’s existing customer base will continue to be supported. “The acquisition underpins Nokia’s drive to deliver in-application and mobile Web browsing analytics to Ovi’s growing, global eco-system of developers and publishers, enabling partners to better connect with their customers and optimize and monetize their offering,” Marco Argenti, Nokia’s vice president of media, said in the statement.

Nokia offered no details about the price of its purchase, but expects the transaction to close during the third quarter of 2010.

Struggling In High-End

Despite sales numbers that continue to dwarf the competition worldwide, Nokia has struggled to offer high-end devices that can effectively and consistently compete for the affections of consumers for the Apple iPhone and Android-running handset, and so also for the attentions of developers—a problem some analysts have suggested might be solved by linking up with Android. Instead, Nokia plans to shift its attentions from Symbian to MeeGo, and in late June it offered a preview of the MeeGo mobile phone software to developers.

On 23 Aug, with Intel, Nokia also plans to make a major research-and-development announcement, though specifics have not yet been shared.