Nokia Corporation announced today its new deal with the social network provider Plazes, which will lead to the purchase of all the company’s assets by the end of this year’s third quarter. The vision behind the acquisition consists in Nokia’s plan to expand beyond its regular service offer and use new technologies and ideas to bring people closer together and make their lives easier and more enjoyable.

Plazes, with its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland and a development office in Berlin, Germany, handles, using a staff of 13, a web platform for social-activity services where people plan, record and share their activities and hobbies. It also helps its users with information about their friends’ whereabouts, with last, present and future locations.

Niklas Savander, Head of Nokia Services & Software, explained according to Reuters that the acquisition will boost the company’s efforts of bringing people and places together, as part of their service expansion strategy.

Nokia is looking to properly prepare the upcoming release of its new cell phone line, which will feature the technology needed for closing in on a user’s location by using the phone, plus many other new add-ons. The plan demands some serious financial ventures in Internet services, which have already begun with an $8.1 billion offer for purchasing the U.S. digital maps firm Navteq, well known for providing data needed for a large number of applications such as Google Maps, Local Live, MapQuest and many more. Other social networking and media services acquired by Nokia over the last year include Twango, Enpocket and Loudeye.

Nokia is the world’s leading cell phone manufacturer with more than 112,000 employees in 120 countries, selling its products in more than 150 countries. The figures registered by the company in 2007 show a global annual revenue of 51.1 billion Euros and an operating profit of 8 billion. Two years ago, the company had close to 2 billion mobile phone subscribers in more than 200 countries, which roughly accounted for about 80 percent of the total mobile users in the world.

The company was founded all the way back in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill in south-western Finland. After World War I, Nokia Wood Mills was acquired by Finnish Rubber Works and after a separate electronics section was formed, Nokia began its work on telephones, telegraph cables and other telecommunications equipment. 

Nokia had a significant role in the development process of the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) and released its first GSM phone in 1991. The first ever commercial GSM call was made by Harri Holkeri, at the time Prime Minister of Finland, talking on a Nokia phone and using a Nokia-supplied network.

The company had had numerous releases, deals and agreements over the years which lead to today’s global success, one of the most significant being 2006’s merger with Siemens AG, and in order to keep the bar high and stay competitive in an ever-changing market, it needs to reinvent itself from time to time with a series of new features and offers.