Nokia held a conference yesterday on "Intelligent Driving- A 2020 View".  Some really interesting speakers.  In the hallways, a lot of talk of HERE's future.  For me the speculation about the consortium of German OEMs is the most interesting.  They have been working this topic for several months and it has influenced conversations with VDS about support for maps (and VDS).  The idea is to develop a back end operator to process probe data as well as build and maintain maps.  There seems to be agreement on data sharing, at least at the level of vehicle position data.  If this group does control HERE, which would be very beneficial to them for many reasons, do they let in the other OEMs?  Are they full partners, or more like the old "partners" in OnStar?  This is probably the biggest question for potential map providers such as VDS.  Hard to imagine how HERE would be managed with this new ownership...