As one of our last appointments on the floor of CES, we went out to a meeting room way back in the back of the South Hall to talk to Tom Murray, Senior Vice President of Market Development for Tom Tom, one of the leading companies selling navigation devices and software. We’ve covered Tom Tom and its products many times here on TUAW before, so it was great to finally sit down with the company and talk about their business.
Perhaps the most interesting thing Murray told me last week was that the company doesn’t see the iPhone (and other smartphone devices) as competitors to its portable navigation device (PND) business. Instead, Murray sees Apple’s platform and others like it as “complementary” to the traditional GPS devices that Tom Tom makes and sells. Murray did admit that the rise of smartphones has “had an impact on our core PND category,” but given that Tom Tom has found success with a number of regional apps on the iOS Store, Murray says that “the iPhone has been accretive to our business.”
The biggest device for Tom Tom at the show was the Go 2505m Live unit. It will arrive in April, and will bring a number of improvements, including a service called HD Traffic, which not only pulls in information on roads all over the US generated by Tom Tom’s own devices, but connects to “partner vehicles” like delivery and fleet vehicles to convey real-time information and accurate routing as you drive around. That service isn’t on the iPhone app yet (in the US, anyway — it is up and running in Europe, we were told), but Murray says it would be “reasonable to assume” that kind of information will eventually find its way into the company’s iPhone app.
Continue reading Tom Tom: Smartphones and nav devices are complementary
Tom Tom: Smartphones and nav devices are complementary originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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