Nokia Adds Daily Deals with Groupon Integration

Nokia NOK has announced that it will add Groupon Now! GRPN deals to its Maps application. The new feature, which is currently being integrated in the United States, (Groupon Now!'s geographical limitations prevent it from going elsewhere), will allow users to quickly access local Groupon deals when examining the map of a particular area. Nokia will mark the deals and their location with Groupon's famous green G image, as seen here:

For the time being, this feature is exclusive to Nokia. Both companies will seemingly benefit from the deal, as Nokia can promote Groupon Now! as one of its primary differentiating features, while Groupon benefits from increased exposure. Users who are interested in purchasing a daily deal will be redirected to Groupon's site. This is an interesting development for Nokia, which has had a difficult time competing against the leading smartphone makers, Apple AAPL and Samsung. iOS and Google's GOOG Android platforms are the current leaders in mobile operating systems. Meanwhile, Nokia also faces competition from Research In Motion RIMM, the once-popular corporation behind the BlackBerry line of business smartphones. Both Nokia and Groupon have watched their stocks decline over the past several months. In the past week, however, Nokia shares have been on the rise. The gains were partially attributed to a widespread rumor that claimed that Lenovo, one of the world's largest manufacturers of laptops and PCs, would acquire Nokia. Those rumors died -- and Nokia shares began to level off -- after a senior Lenovo exec said that the rumors "must be a joke." In February, Nokia unveiled the 808 PureView, the company's greatest attempt at competing against the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S III. The device was tailor-made for amateur photographers who were looking to get more out of the cameras that come built into cellular devices. Unlike other smartphones on the market, which feature cameras with no more than eight megapixels, the 808 PureView packs a whopping 41-megapixel camera. Instead of enabling users to take larger images, the 808 PureView uses its megapixels to allow the user to zoom up to three times without losing any photo detail. Apple is expected to unveil its next smartphone, the iPhone 5, in September. It is not yet known when Samsung may unveil the Galaxy S IV. However, the South Korean manufacturer is expected to release two Windows Phone 8 devices before the end of the year. In June, Research In Motion announced that it had delayed the BlackBerry 10 platform and would not release it before 2013. Follow me @LouisBedigianBZ