With Nokia no longer burdened with phone manufacturing, the finnish company has acquired Desti, a virtual travel agent app to expand its HERE Mapping business. The announcement was made on Official Nokia Blog but details involving the deal were undisclosed.
Desti is an app that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to help users locate what they are looking for. The startup company was part of the SRI international, the company that developed Apple’s Siri.
“At Here we match people with the places that matter to them, so that they feel like a local wherever they are,” said Don Zereski, Here VP of Search and Places.
Zereski explains the technology doesn’t work like traditional search engines, which index keywords, but instead analyses the context around the questions asked. Based on the query, the app tries to create a natural dialogue with the person.
“We want to create a new class of location services that implicitly understands who you are and what you’re looking for, sometimes even before you ask” added Zereski.
As part of the deal the Desti app has been pulled out of the Apple store and the app itself would shut down in 90 days. Instead Nokia would be incorporating the Desti app into its HERE platform to add more personalised search to the product over the balance of this year.
The company’s approach with the HERE maps if for it to be able to compete with Google Maps and Apple Maps.
