Tuesday, June 30. 2009

TomTom Shareholders Approve Rights Issue, Stock at 8 Month High

A few weeks ago TomTom announced plans to raise funds via two different routes: a private placement and a rights issue. The former occurred earlier this month. Today shareholder approved the rights issue, with shares priced at 4.21 euros. That bumped the stock up 7% to an 8 month high of 8.74 euros this morning (EDT).

Analysts now report there's no danger of bankruptcy.

- Reuters

Tuesday, June 23. 2009

Infotech Focuses on GIS; Dips Toe in Electronics

The Indian company has had a GIS focus for some years and expects to grow its base per chairman and managing director B V R Mohan Reddy, "...we plan to dig deep into GIS and engineering services segments, where we are strong. We would also like to focus on adjacencies in these segments to maximise the returns."

But, there's also a move into electronics. "Electronics designing is something we are currently working on. In fact, we are already in this field in different verticals. All that we have to do now is to bring those capabilities into a single vertical and hone up skills further to meet the demands of the electronics industry." First target: Japan.

- DNA India

Wednesday, June 17. 2009

Not the Marketing Message TomTom May Want to Send

More than one news outlet is touting that TomTom, even as it raises capital to retire some debt, is turning to Homer Simpson for help. If you've not heard, you can now download that famous voice for your device. I was a bit surprised to hear this as a local business story this morning on NPR. TomTom US headquarters is outside Boston, Mass. though frankly, it's rarely in the local biz news.

Australia Smarthouse notes that among TomTom's other challenges, authorities in that country are looking at banning various in car devices, including PNDs, for safety reasons.

Linking up with Homer either makes a company look cool or like a loser. I have a sense that although still wildly popular, Homer is losing some of his shine.

San Diego Preps to Be GIS Hub

It's not yet like cluster in Colorado, but San Diego is mustering forces to be become a hotbed of geospatial.

The San Diego Software Industry Council is organizing a GIS interest group - it holds its first meeting at UC San Diego’s Computer Science and Engineering building at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 18 (tomorrow).

The executive director of council, Bob Slapin, is starting to talk the talk: "There is a massive amount of data lying around that is related to a spot on the map, (environmental, traffic, health). This data is often in different silos and in most cases making sense of it requires running around, finding it and mapping it somehow. The data is often structured and unstructured."

Why the grouping around San Diego? Suggested sources:

- legacy expertise of the U.S. Navy in satellite-based global positioning technologies
- the development of location-based services for wireless devices at San Diego-based Qualcomm
- ESRI is about a 2-hour drive and hold its UC there
- local academic expertise also emerged in 2007, when researchers at San Diego State University’s Visualization Center tackled wildfires

- Xconomy

Monday, June 15. 2009

TomTom Addresses Debt with Stock Sale

The four founders will buy shares and some others will be sold via a private placement. That should drop the company debt to €700 million. The company stock price has dropped 66% in the last 12 months, with many concerns related to the debt. With the recent announcement of a nav app for the iPhone, the stock price is up. There's been speculation Apple may invest in TomTom. Forbes' discussions with analysts and insiders suggests that's unlikely.

- Financial Times

ForexYard offers an analysis of the map acquisitions in recent years. Key quoyr regarding TomTom/Tele Atlas: "'In the future this will feature in textbooks as a perfect example of how stupid management sometimes can be,' said Corne van Zeijl from SNS Asset Management, who now owns TomTom shares but did not at the time of the acquisition."

Tuesday, June 9. 2009

Podcast: Spatial Databases: A Commodity?

This week's question: Is the spatial database a commodity? With all the big database players storing and querying spatial data and several open source offerings in the market, is spatial no longer special when in comes to the database world? Is it time to "stop getting excited" about the addition of spatial support and simply use the technology?


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