TomTom gets nod to buy out TeleAtlas
By Ben Robinson on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 4:11 PM PST In GPS/Satellite Navigation
TomTom has been cleared by the EC to acquire mapping company TeleAtlas. TeleAtlas provides digital maps and content forms the core of many Nav and LBS (location-based services) offering – Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps for example! TomTom on the other hand has sold nearly 20 mn ddevices, mostly the Sat Nav units.
Since last year, TomTom has been utilising both user-generated content and TeleAtlas mapping to inform it’s MapShare service, allowing users to feeback details of changes or errors on routes – kinda like a wikipedia for maps – well sort of.
This represents a canny move by TomTom – with the advancement of GPS/Sat Nav on to Mobile devices, anyone in the purely hardware game is going to be facing a tough time – Nokia (NYSE: NOK) predicts sales of 35 mn devices with GPS on this year alone! The big three “traditional GPS” vendors – TomTom, Garmin, and Navman – account for 80% of the market currently – a market the handset vendors want a (big) piece of!
Will peoples’ requirements for “convergence” (multiple services on one device) lead to the traditional GPS vendors being edged out over time? It’s anyone’s guess, but one thing I do know is that my current TomTom unit is still in use for Sat Nav duties – for now…….!
(Note: if anyone from TomTom, or any of the other manufacturers for that matter, wants to send me a review unit to test against a Mobile device, please do feel free – we are always open to giving our readers reviews of what device is best at a given feature!)
[Via: PC Advisor]
[quote]This represents a canny move by TomTom – with the advancement of GPS/Sat Nav on to Mobile devices, anyone in the purely hardware game is going to be facing a tough time – Nokia predicts sales of 35 mn devices with GPS on this year alone![/quote]
If you’re implying that Nokia would have hard time because of this, you’re wrong. Nokia made a similar move last year and purchased Navteq which was actually larger player than Tele Atlas. But you are correct that everyone else than Tom Tom and Nokia are now pretty much screwed, since there is no third player having such a wide coverage map offer. Navteq and Tele Atlas are probably going to continue their sales to 3rd parties, but inevitably in terms of Nokia and Tom Tom.