Symbian Toys

Nokia has announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Plazes, a context-aware social-activity mobile phone service.

"This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy", said Niklas Savander, head of Nokia services and software.

"In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area."

Nokia says Plazes adds the elements of "place" and "time" to social networking through features that allow people to alert friends of their activity and location; review their own and others' past activities; share their experiences and make plans with friends, who are then able to respond with comments and suggestions as well as their own location information.

Plazes is a privately-owned start-up company of 13 people based in Berlin. The agreement is subject to the usual conditions and is expected to close in the third quarter 2008 after which Plazes will become part of Nokia's Services & Software unit.