Thank God It’s Friday, right friends?  That said, today’s little bit of news is not about WHERE, but instead, about the entire GPS industry, and a pretty big transaction that’s about to take place.

According to an article I just read over at Mobiledia, Nokia is about to finalize on their purchase of GPS company Navteq.  Navteq has been a pretty dominant force in the U.S. when it comes to digital mapmaking, and Nokia as we all know, has been a pretty dominant force in the mobile realm.  Combine the two and some magic might be happening.  The final purchase price?  A paltry $8.1 billion.  Here’s a sweet quote from the CEO of Nokia as to the reasoning behind this purchase:

“Location based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia’s Internet services strategy. The acquisition of Navteq is another step toward Nokia becoming a leading player in this space…By joining forces with Navteq, we will be able to bring context and geographical information to a number of our Internet services with accelerated time to market. We also look forward to maintaining and enhancing the services and support provided to Navteq’s existing and future customers.”

We’ll see what kind of things are going to be afoot…stay tuned to this one.