TomTom bids €1.8bn for map provider

TomTom has put a €1.8bn cash bid on the table for Tele Atlas, the company that supplies map data to the sat nav firm's 10 million GPS devices. The idea is that social-networking type information can be integrated into the mapping data to create a more dynamic service for TomTom users. TomTom chief executive officer Harold …

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda tuff for folk living in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man

Just try and find a location in the Channel Islands or on the Isle of Man with any product based on Tele Atlas maps.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Kinda tuff for folk living in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man

yes, we've been waiting for years for them to get around to mapping us, not that the locals should need it, but it would be good for visitors, and if navteq can do it why can't teleatlas?!

[Ed]

Not sure what this has to do with social networking...

What has this to do with social networking? TomTom can integrate whatever they want with their maps, they don't need to control the data collection process for that...

Seems like an interesting move, but if TomTom do annoy other companies that use Tele Atlas as their data provider, we could end up with having all maps based on NavTeq, the only other real competitor...

[Anonymous Coward]

Social networking?

Not so much social networking, more like direct control of a critical supplier, a supplier who also used to be important to anyone who might fancy competing with TomTom.

Borrow €1.6M to finance a €1.8M bid? Gotta love this highly leveraged capitalism (or perhaps not, if you're a first time buyer trying to buy a house in most parts of the UK).

[Niall Wallace]

Maps

Would rather pay for one with OS mapping when I am no longer able to remember a route identified from a Landranger or Memory Map. Less chance of landing in the drink, flying off a cliff, thumping down a farm track much to the farm workers attention or ending up at totally the wrong golf course... if I played golf.

[Dillon Pyron]

Leveraged?

"Borrow €1.6M to finance a €1.8M bid? Gotta love this highly leveraged capitalism (or perhaps not, if you're a first time buyer trying to buy a house in most parts of the UK)."

Or in California, where people were putting down $50K for a $2.2M house, then getting an interest only loan. Of course, you can now buy that house for about $1.5M at the foreclosure auction, if you've got cash.

Did the author mean social networking or social engineering. "Okay, on the Garmin map, Main St ends right about here."

[Anonymous Coward]

social networking, openstreetmap

FYI, OpenStreetMap has Isle of Man:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?mlat=54.25&mlon=-4.5&zoom=11

[Scott Mckenzie]

Google

Tele Atlas also supply a huge chunk of data to Google for their Maps and Earth applications...

[Anonymous Coward]

Feedback on map errors

I'm happy to supply feedback on map errors, and have done so on a couple of occasions -- one of which involved tomtom directing my car over the footbridge that crosses a railway line.

However, those updates seem to be taking a long long time to find their way back to my tom tom. Though I ocasionally collect updates from the tomtom web site, its not obvious whether anybody is actually updating the maps to incorporate user-submitted updates.

[Anonymous Coward]

Map errors?

The TomTom updates don't update the maps, they update the OS in the TomTom device. If you want new maps you'll have to pay for them - £60 for the UK maps last I checked...

[Andrew Pike]

Moving to a razor blades/inkjet cartridge business model?

or just maybe they have seen the writing on the wall - GPS hardware is fast becoming a commodity product. In the future the profit will be made on value added services and the supply of maps themselves.

[David Flanders]

Garmin don't use TeleAtlas

The TomTom competitor that uses TeleAtlas is Navman, Garmin uses Navtec (which many feel is a better set of maps).