Nokia sat-nav subsidiary requires gentle guidance on location of Santa Claus

The North Pole is not the Arctic Circle

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One of Finland's great sources of pride (and, let's face it, wealth) is the fact that the mobile phone giant Nokia was born here and still maintains its headquarters in these northern climes.
      It almost ranks up there with the fact that Santa Claus lives in Lapland, which makes it doubly disconcerting to read that Navteq, one of Nokia's U.S. subsidiaries, has been spreading very American but completely false information to the effect that Santa lives at "the North Pole".
     
Navteq reported on Thursday that it was "working closely with the North Pole's Department of Transportation (NPDOT) to ensure that Santa Claus has the latest NAVTEQ® map data powering his sleigh this holiday season".
      This of course is very good to hear, especially since Navteq's digital map data "not only enables chimney-to-chimney routing around the world, it contains millions of Points of Interest (POIs), making it easy to locate everything from restaurants and hotels to banks and sleigh repair shops".
      However, there is the undisputed fact that the old guy lives in Korvatunturi, and not on some godforsaken ice-floe in the shrinking North Pole area, and it does beg the question of how a Nokia subsidiary - and indeed a world leader in map-making technology - could have blundered so egregiously in determining Santa Claus's true domicile.
     
Was there possibly some problem in parsing the difference between the Arctic Circle, where Santa lives, and the North Pole, quite some distance further north? Might the GPS satellites have slipped in orbit?
     
Nokia HQ was quick to scotch rumours that Santa had left Finland, perhaps concerned at the prospect of tax increases and public spending cuts anticipated in the New Year, and stated that within the parent company they are well aware of the bearded gent's home address, "but the subsidiary needs some guidance".
      "We are firmly in the Korvatunturi camp", assured a Nokia spokesperson, who also hinted darkly that it might be a good idea if Santa skipped the American company's offices on his travels this year "so that they will definitely remember next time".
      Apparently a cordial seasonal memo on the subject left the Nokia headquarters in Espoo on Thursday for the Navteq HQ in Chicago.
     
There has been no reaction on the possible damage done to the nation's "brand image" by this unfortunate geographical lapse, but it is perhaps worth noting that the Nokia Chairman and former CEO Jorma Ollila is also heading a commission set up to develop a "national brand" for Finland.
      Santa Claus was himself unavailable for comment, with staff noting that he was naturally somewhat occupied at the present time.


Links:
  NAVTEQ press release 17.12.2009

Helsingin Sanomat