Tid Bits from TeleAtlas 2007 Full Year Results

It’s all driven by the PND market for TeleAtlas right now…

Overall revenue increased 17%

• Six of the eight leading portable navigation device providers worldwide use Tele Atlas maps.

• PND growth 35% - 14.7 Million map units (bundled with PND sale).

• Map units in PND average selling price was just over 11 euro

• America’s PND revenue grew 136% year over year

• Wireless grew 66% on the backs of customer’s like Google, RIM, Mappy and Wayfinder

• Also helped by selection of Teleatlas to power Google Maps for mobile and Google Earth in Europe

• TomTom was largest customer representing 32% of revenue

• Automotive business saw declines in part due to loss of VW business, although picked up BMW business which should ship in 2008

• Expects 2008 revenue between 375 – 385 euro, versus 308 euro in 2007

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Soaring Theft of Personal Navigation Devices

As portable, in-vehicle GPS navigation devices grow in popularity among consumers, they are also growing in popularity among a less-than-desirable segment of the population - thieves. According to a recent article from the Associated Press ("As prices drop, theft of GPS devices soar,") theft of these popular devices are "dramatically increasing" in many areas. Forget to remove your device from your dash because you are running a quick errand? Ask Austin Sweazy what happened to his. "In the few minutes the couple were inside the store, a thief smashed the window of Sweazy's car, snatched his $600 TomTom portable navigation unit off the windshield and fled into the gathering dusk."

"Even people who take their GPS gadgets off their dashboards when they leave their cars are returning to find windows smashed, as thieves gamble that an empty plastic cradle suction-cupped to the windshield means a GPS unit has been hidden somewhere in the car."..."It gets worse: Taking the plastic cradle off the windshield might not be enough if the suction cup leaves a ring of film on the glass. That alone can signal a thief."

To make the theft even more painful, the units are rarely covered by insurance, and if they are, their value is usually less than the deductible. So why has the level of thefts risen in this market? Easy. The value of the item makes the theft lucrative - "so lucrative, in fact, that victims often say GPS thieves ignored other items in their cars."

Why can't the drivers just locate the car when stolen? Because the GPS devices are receivers, not locators. It looks like what we really need is someone to come along and develop a GPS navigation device with the ability to locate itself (when missing).

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_on_bi_ge/business_of_life


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Nokia 500 PND

Well it looks like Nokia announced today the arrival of its next generation of PND, due out in Europe in 4Q and the U.S. by end of year or early 2008. Reviews for the first try (the 330) weren't all that great... cnet review categorized it as 'not horrible, per se'. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. On paper the new 500 seems to have a lot of the high end features that one would presumably want when buying a system... like built in bluetooth for using the device as a hands free system and an fm transmitter for easily tapping into the vehicles existing stereo system. The 500 also speaks road names and ties the POI contact information to the communications systems to make it easy to call ahead to a POI with a touch of a button. Although none of this is the first time we've seen these capabilities in a PND, it's all catch up to Garmin as far as I can tell. I thought the feature that allows you to upload the addresses of your contacts from your phone to your PND so you can navigate to them was a nice touch, although one that I doubt will get much use.

Price is set at 300 euro, which seems to undercut similar Garmin offerings by about 1/3, but the devil is likely to be in the details. Folks have been screaming that the sky is falling for pure play gps manufacturers like TomTom and Garmin for quite a while... ie prices will begin to collapse and massive competition is on its way. And this Nokia offering certainly seems to be a case in point. However, for customer that are willing to shell out many hundreds of dollars for a PND, I'd question how sensitive they will be to that extra hundred dollars or two when faced with the alternative between "not horrible" and state of the art.

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Voice and GPS: Peanut Butter and Jelly

Voice-enabled GPS services becoming mainstream as big GPS manufacturers and mapping software firms integrating voice into their consumer products...

http://cp.gpsworld.com/gpscp/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=451017
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