Nokia agrees to buy Enpocket

Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, didn’t disclose terms of the deal. Closely held Enpocket is based in Boston and was founded in 2001, according to a statement by Nokia today. The U.S. company also has offices in London, Mumbai and Singapore.

Nokia said the purchase will speed its push into mobile advertising by capitalizing on Enpocket’s technology and relationships. Nokia is seeking to get a share of the mobile ad market, dominated by Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. Global sales are estimated to rise to US$11.4 billion by 2011 from US$2.17 billion currently, according to Informa Telecoms & Media Group.

“Nokia wants a share of this market. Nokia is trying to diversify its business away from handsets and into services and applications,” said Mark Newman, head of research at Informa in London.

“This puts them in competition with Google and Yahoo.”

Enpocket, whose customers include wireless operator Vodafone Group Plc and drinks maker PepsiCo Inc. , can deliver “personalized” ads through text and video messages as well as via the Internet on mobile devices, according to its Web site. The purchase will be completed in the fourth quarter, Nokia said.

The focus of “personalized mobile advertising is really attractive,” Newman said.

The Finnish company said Aug. 29 it will assemble all its Internet services under the “Ovi” brand, which means “door” in Finnish. Ovi will include Nokia Music Store, N-Gage games and Nokia Maps, and more Web services will be added in coming months.

Advertising will be “an important element” of its new Web strategy, Nokia Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanperae said.

Nokia shares rose as much as 39 cents, or 1.6 percent, to 24.72 euros and traded at 24.59 euros at 12:33 p.m. in Helsinki. Before today, the stock had risen 57 percent this year.

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