Nokia has announced its plans to acquire Motally, the U.S.-based mobile analytics service. The financial details of the deal were not revealed.

Motally provides mobile browsing and in-app tracking and reporting, designed for use by publishers and developers to help them optimize their mobile applications. Finnish manufacturer Nokia intends to incorporate Motally’s tracking tools into its Symbian platform, which is still widely used across the world. Motally will be adapted for Qt, Meego and Java as well. From Nokia’s released statement,

“The acquisition underpins Nokia’s drive to deliver in-application and mobile web browsing analytics to Ovi’s growing, global eco-system of developers and publishers, enabling partners to better connect with their customers and optimize and monetize their offering,” said Marco Argenti, Vice President, Media, Nokia.

It’s a necessary service for today’s growing mobile economy, as publishers and developers look to monetize their apps and overall mobile presence. For Nokia, the acquisition provides measures for some introspective analysis of its own mobile platform. Many services that have applied similar technology to social web and mobile apps have evolved into ad networks, or supplement ad and data exchange networks, ultimately affecting the mobile marketing industry.

This is an area Nokia will need to further develop for a broader base–Nokia’s been losing ground to Apple and Android for over a year now, and this is partially due to Nokia’s platform structure and accessibility. To this end, Nokia has found that its native app offerings are perhaps too exclusive and unable to keep up with ever-changing consumer demands (something Microsoft will also need to consider as it preps for a major Windows 7 mobile push).

Apple and Google have both made recent acquisitions towards mobile advertising, though Apple has already shut down Quattro to focus on its iAds offering. Another company that’s looking to mobile marketing as another foothold in the smart phone mound is RIM, which has slowed talks for an acquisition of leading ad network Millennial Media.