Nokia Corp. is more than doubling the size of its direct venture investment fund with an injection of $150 million, with a view to putting some of the money to use in India and China.
Nokia Growth Partners was set up in 2004 to directly manage $100 million of Nokia’s money. Its investments have included Bitboys, a Finnish developer of graphics chips that was bought by ATI in 2006 for $44.5 million, and Global Locate, a U.S. maker of GPS chips that was bought by Broadcom Corp. last year.
Apart from seeking a financial return, the fund hunts for startups with technologies that are useful to Nokia. Some areas of focus have included mobile payments and camera technology.
Venture funds have become a standard accessory for companies in the cell phone arena, though the approaches vary. Qualcomm Inc. has a venture fund with a broad portfolio, much like Nokia Growth Partners. Research in Motion Ltd., which makes the BlackBerry, announced in May that it had set up a $150 million fund with outside partners to invest in companies creating software for BlackBerrys and other mobile devices. In March, Apple Inc. said it would set up a $100 million “iFund” for the development of iPhone and iPod Touch applications.
Yahoo prepares to close its music service: Yahoo Inc. is offering coupons or refunds to users who find songs they bought inaccessible after Sept. 30, when the company shuts its music-download service.
The decision to close the Yahoo Music Store had added fuel to criticisms over copy-protection measures known as digital rights management, but Yahoo promised it won’t entirely abandon loyal customers.
The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo’s new partner, RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the MP3 format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who “have serious problems with this arrangement,” Yahoo said.
Internet makeover inching along: A massive project to redesign and rebuild the Internet from scratch is inching along with $12 million in government funding and donations of network capacity by two major research organizations.
Many researchers want to rethink the Internet’s underlying architecture, saying a “clean-slate” approach is the only way to truly address security and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet’s birth in 1969.
The Associated Press
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