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Joined: Jan 14, 2005 Posts: 19638 Location: Blackpool , Lancs
Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:30 pm Post subject:
If you do manage to talk directly to someone at TomTom a simple question is to ask them why only the iPhone platform is supported and are there plans to support WM7 and more importantly Android.
In addition the newer "black box" units have the file system locked down, why? Is this an active measure against piracy or has it been done for other reasons, either way I won't be using any of their locked down products as they are far too restrictive in terms of what I expect to be able to do with a unit.
Whilst I still use their product on my iPhone because I can customise it I no longer bother with their black box products, strange that I started out with a PDA based phone with TomTom software, switched to the PND black boxes then went full circle back to my phone due to their inability to support my needs. As for a black box gps unit in the car I use a Garmin these days when the iPhone isn't going to be suitable, for long distance trips the PND still out performs the smart phone but not if it's from TomTom - Mike
Joined: Feb 27, 2006 Posts: 14890 Location: Keynsham
Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:37 pm Post subject:
tomtom_shareholder wrote:
They also recently opened up a speed camera databse with hundreds of thousands of cameras worldwide. It's available for mobile app developers.
Together with MapShare, this is clearly an instance of where you as a shareholder are being taken in by the hype they put out. Neither cameras nor MapShare are doing the job properly. Persuade yourself to ask at the meeting my questions about MapShare and ask the same about cameras and listen to the answers with a sceptical ear - they have never yet presented any information or evidence that they check and verify cameras and map corrections.
You would have been better trying to invest in PocketGPSWorld's development of CamerAlert. _________________ Dennis
Joined: Aug 21, 2005 Posts: 1761 Location: Kent, England
Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:59 pm Post subject:
I said I would wait for others to voice their opinion and there you have a couple more. And remember that many of the regular contributors to this forum cut their teeth on Tom Tom. And many of us still think it has the most intuitive interface. I actually want it to succeed, but doubt that it will, unless it stops believing its own marketing b********t and starts listening to its users.
As for my 2 year old prediction? Well people like your father will be happy with the built in sat nav in his next car - that is easier to see than any black box. And people like me (who in reality is probably as old as your father) will go for a nice new shiny smartphone this summer (my 4th one). It will have sat nav on it, but it won't be Tom Tom.
As to being agile TT have, like many large corporations, turned from being a racing yacht to being a giant tanker. Android has been about for over 2 years now and was taking significant market share almost from the off, as almost every commentator except Tom Tom realised it would. The TT of old would have had it sorted within 3 months but we are still waiting ............ And other more agile companies have taken advantage. My hard earned cash has now gone to Sygic (for European sat nav) and Copilot (for when I visit the USA). I would still prefer the TT interface (if not the "support") but they don't want to sell it to me. _________________ Peter
HTC Sensation
Sygic GPS for Europe (No more TT "support"!)
Copilot for USA
Bury CC9060 bluetooth car kit & Brodit mount
Thanks for the questions, i will ask them and i will require real substance in the answers. TomTom always claims agility, so there must be reasons behind some things.
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:14 am Post subject:
tomtom_shareholder wrote:
I’m a marketing and strategy consultant who recently decided to buy some TomTom shares and hope to make some money with it. Since then I try to read a lot about the satnav business to check if I made a right decision.
No offence intended, but you're probably a couple of years too late. The boom times for Sat Nav have come and gone, it's now a commodity item. The other concern is the rise of free mapping like OpenStreetMap and fierce competition from other providers of Location Based Services like Google who have a head start.
I think the strongest asset TomTom have at the moment is HD Traffic. This has a high barrier to entry and if they can continue to develop this to critical mass then they may be onto something. _________________ Gone fishing!
I’m a marketing and strategy consultant who recently decided to buy some TomTom shares and hope to make some money with it. Since then I try to read a lot about the satnav business to check if I made a right decision.
No offence intended, but you're probably a couple of years too late. The boom times for Sat Nav have come and gone, it's now a commodity item. The other concern is the rise of free mapping like OpenStreetMap and fierce competition from other providers of Location Based Services like Google who have a head start.
I think the strongest asset TomTom have at the moment is HD Traffic. This has a high barrier to entry and if they can continue to develop this to critical mass then they may be onto something.
I believed this forum to be more of a technical forum for GPS geeks rather then shareholders. So I didn't elaborate on my decision. But since you ask...
When looking at shares there's always a few things to keep in mind. Not only how well is a certain company doing, but also whether or not future expectations are already part of the price.
For instance, there is no discussion about whether or not Apple is a succesful company. They are highly succesful with their ipod's, pad's, phones and so on. But I can also see that an Apple share now costs 335 dollars, where I could buy them for about 60 in 2007.
I'm not saying that Apple can't live up to expectations. They might even overdeliver. But to me it's difficult to see which part of expectations are already part of the price and which are not.
Also you have to take in account that people (psychologically) tend to behave me-too. Which means that if a certain share becomes either popular or unpopular, there is often exaggeration in the share price. This leads to some shares to become 'undervalued' (of course this is my perspective, I cant tell I'm right yet)
When looking at TomTom shareprice, it dropped from 50 euros in their heydays, to 4 euros in their lows, now dealing for 6,20. I believe that both the heydays and the lows are an exaggeration.
The current low price is based on two major fears:
- One fear was about the financing of TeleAtlas. This is what the article is about. A large part of the debt is repayed, so I don't see any risks there anymore
- Second fear was about smartphones and competition from Nokia, Google, and so on. I believe that competition will be fierce for TomTom. No doubt. But I don't believe in a 'winner takes all' (people tend to look that way at Google), who will eredicate all other satnav companies from earth.
Reports say that the total market of navigation will grow (I call this the total pie), but that the piece of the pie that is PND will decrease. I believe that the pie will be big enough for many companies to have their part, and that TomTom will also be able to play their part in the smartphone business. As the total pie grows, they don't even need to be marketleader to be profitable. Smaller niches (like a sportswatch they co-created with nike) can be interesting as well. http://www.youtube.com/user/TomTomOfficial#p/u/0/zFT4rcseJs8
Also, people who are now preaching doom scenarios, forget that TomTom DOES have the maps. This is an important asset, and they can be licenced to many smartphone developers. Also, as you said, I have high expectations from HD traffic. It works brilliantly in Europa, and is the best live trafficjam avoider available. This will come to the US also. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c64TqN_-qw
Satnav is indeed a commodity. But commodity items, can be valuable markets as well. Since black and white tv people also bought colour tv's, widescreen tv's, flatscreen tv's and so on.
So innovation is key. Because of the financial problems, in the last two years TomTom has put almost all it's money in deleveraging. A lot of money went to the bank, and funds for research and development were limited. Also they couldn't grow in emerging markets like India and Brazil as fast as they wanted.
Since recently this has changed, and r&d expenses and expansion to new markets are growing. On a long term we will see results of this, including a well functioning HD traffic in a wide number of countries. As stated in their manifesto http://www.youtube.com/user/TomTomOfficial#p/u/2/6Rc12x-XlYQ
I want to make one final remark. I'm not naive about whats happening in satnav. There are serious challanges, and the market changes rapidly. But I also believe that TomTom is able to manage better than some expect. Or at least better than the low expectations people have today.
Last edited by tomtom_shareholder on Mon Apr 11, 2011 11:57 am; edited 2 times in total
Joined: 11/07/2002 14:36:40 Posts: 23848 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 11:42 am Post subject:
And for those who cite Google as a threat, they still use TeleAtlas and other providers map data in their navigation apps. In the US where they use their own data there are masses of complaints about errors in routing, priorities and other issues. And Google have admitted that capturing navigable map data will be far more complex in Europe and other countries than it is in the US.
With reference to an earlier comment, I'm sure that Garmin were bidding for Navteq and not Tele Atlas? Garmin is cash rich as a company but it would have been interesting to see how they would have stood had they bought the map company.
The issues surrounding smartphone apps are I believe easy to understand. TomTom were burnt badly by having to support a vast range of Windows Mobile devices with the accompanying issues of hardware variety etc. They were never happy with trying to support their product on hardware that they had little control over.
Android is a similar case, with a vast variety of hardware and specifications and as we have found, it is a nightmare with software working perfectly on some devices and not on others.
iOS on the other hand is much simpler. I say that from the approach of a developer and not a fan of one platform or another. Ask any developer who codes for both and they will say the same thing. Lower sales, many more support issues and generally more difficult to work with.
Android may well be growing at a pace, but app sales are a fraction of those on iOS and the free Google navigation has impacted on navigation app sales. We don't know how well CoPilot, Navigon and Sygic do on Android in comparison to iOS but Garmin aren't there either and their iOS offering is US only and off-board.
Rather than play 'me too' they may be wisely holding off rather than participating in a loss making venture? _________________ Darren Griffin
Android may well be growing at a pace, but app sales are a fraction of those on iOS and the free Google navigation has impacted on navigation app sales.
I forgot to mention this, but I know this is a reason. I find it difficult to judge. On one hand I understand why TomTom says: let's wait and see. Also, it does have to be profitable, and you don't want to have all these costly support issues.
On the other hand, I know that there are many people who own an Android phone, and they want a TomTom app. These are people, customers, that you don't want to ignore. Especially when some of them, on the long term, will pay a small monthly price for live services.
With reference to an earlier comment, I'm sure that Garmin were bidding for Navteq and not Tele Atlas? Garmin is cash rich as a company but it would have been interesting to see how they would have stood had they bought the map company
That's what makes all this so damn interesting. At least to me.
We now have Garmin with lots of cash and no maps, and TomTom with no cash and lots of maps. Which one is better off?
Garmin has been very shareholder friendly. They payed 30% of their year profit back to shareholders, in the form of dividends. TomTom had been shareholder unfriendly untill now. All shareholders did was bleed for an expensive purchase. No dividends, because banks had to be payed. And extra shares being sold because some banks would've otherwise pulled out. (more shares, means lower value per share, obviously).
But now that this is over, what will it mean for the long term future?? Are you better of with cash or with maps. Who knows? Looking at smartphone growth I would presume the latter. Also, products like tomtom co-created with nike, are only possible because they own the maps. Also, even a very rich company like Google has difficult times getting their maps right (as you mentioned above). So TeleAtlas is still valuable.
Offtopic:I believe that TomTom and Garmin shouldn't fight eachother too harshly. If two dogs fight for a bone, it's most of the times the third one who takes it. TomTom made huge marketing expenses in the US during Christmas sales (Wallmart etc.) just to grow a little PND marketshare on expense of Garmin.
I don't think that it will do either of them any good. I think there is some emotional reasons behind this competition. I think they can both find interesting revenues in niches (Garmin is for instance also succesful in navigation for planes and boats) without harming eachother too much.
Last edited by tomtom_shareholder on Mon Apr 11, 2011 12:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Aug 31, 2005 Posts: 15135 Location: Bradford, West Yorkshire
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 12:48 pm Post subject:
tomtom_shareholder wrote:
On the other hand, I know that there are many people who own an Android phone, and they want a TomTom app. These are people, customers, that you don't want to ignore. Especially when some of them, on the long term, will pay a small monthly price for live services.
ah, but do they want a TomTom app or a navigation app? many people use 'tomtom' as a generic name for a satnav (like we call them hoovers instead of vacuum cleaners). with a bit of research they will see there are already a handful of very good navigation apps available for android already.
of all the people i know with an android phone not one has said they wanted tomtom on it. most have asked what satnav apps are available and i always recomend navigon, but none have asked for tomtom...
ah, but do they want a TomTom app or a navigation app? many people use 'tomtom' as a generic name for a satnav (like we call them hoovers instead of vacuum cleaners).
MaFt
I can't speak for the UK or US. So it's very possible that you're right and it's more of a generic comment. But even if this is the case, then you can use this to your advantage. If people search for your brandname in an appstore, just because it's wellknown, than that's an advantage in itself.
Here in the Netherlands they mean TomTom specificly. Because of live traffic information. I take myself as an example. I own a nice new Audi car, with a beautiful in-dash navi system. With beautiful I mean the way it looks.
When I'm on the highway and there's a traffic jam, the navsystem tries to route me through the city. And congestion is even worse there, but the satnav doesn't know, because it only knows highway jams.
So now, even though I own a very nice looking (and expensive) in dash system, I also have TomTom on my iphone to avoid traffic jams. It cost me 80 euros (100 dollars) and saved me a lot of time.
Joined: Apr 14, 2010 Posts: 1262 Location: West London
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:07 pm Post subject:
As Tomtom are breaking into the Indian market, and, I think I read, are just starting on the Chinese market - both have enormous potential. I hope they will have some time still for their existing customer base. _________________ Mike R [aka Wyvern46]
Go 530T - unsupported
Go550 Live [not renewed]
Kia In-dash Tomtom
As Tomtom are breaking into the Indian market, and, I think I read, are just starting on the Chinese market - both have enormous potential. I hope they will have some time still for their existing customer base.
In India they will set up a seperate branche. With marketers, accountmanagers, customer service, etc. So it won't harm the service you receive. Though I read here, that service needs an upgrade in the UK.
China is different. And interesting. They don't own chinese maps, and it's not an open market. You can't just start a business over there. I believe they're not even allowed to map China (if you would even want to).
They have a joint venture with a Chinese company AutoNavi http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=515933
TomTom has 49% of the shares of the venture. So they can make profit out of it, but this company will always stay in chinese hands.
So if there's any place in need for HD traffic it's over there. As China is a centrally governed country, they make huge detailed 5-year plans. An item of national top priority in the five year plan, is dealing with traffic jams. I hope TomTom can pursuade chinese (local) governments to accept their help in dealing with these problems.
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