A Changing Market for Digital Navigation - TomTom Pushes for Newer, Faster Innovation for Mobile and Enterprise Solutions

When you have only two major players in a market, the competitive differences are magnified. And if one coughs, the other sneezes.  Such is the case with TomTom and NAVTEQ. Both companies have acquired or been acquired; experienced layoffs, and refocused their business model. The disruption can be directly tied to an explosion in the mobile device market. You would think this would be good for both companies? But in a market where everyone has a navigation device, and you are competing with a company that is both a client and a competitor (i.e. Google), what do you do?

Reorg
Today, TomTom issued a statement regarding the company's reorganization and we've posted the important news items; see the company's press release and All Points Blog about the layoff of 10% of their workforce. When I spoke with company executives this morning, they reiterated that the change to their business model would focus on faster time to market of products and the ability to leverage core assets that include traffic data and an adherence to the Navigation Data Standard (NDS).  The NDS has been identified by TomTom as a means to help standardize how maps go into navigation devices.  Charles Cautley, managing director of the Automotive, Enterprise & Government Business unit (AEG) for TomTom said, "NDS is hugely strategic for TomTom." Cautley believes that this simplifies content accessibility and the map compilation process.

TomTom sees that there is still lots of growth in maps, POIs and especially traffic products. In the traditional GIS and enterprise market, the company sees growth in various site selection applications as well as real-time information to engineers and city planners. TomTom wants to combine their map products, traffic information and geocoder, essentially a bundle of their strategic assets, and offer them to industry segments.

A focus on Dynamic Traffic Data
Late last year, TomTom released their Traffic Manifesto thereby attempting to stake a unique selling proposition in the navigation market. On a webinar yesterday (December 7), the company announced that they had captured 5 trillion anonymous GPS traffic measurements since 2007 and used the data to create a rich database of historical traffic profiles. The data goes into TomTom's HD Traffic products.

Why the upheaval in digital navigation? What's Changed?
Navigation is becoming pervasive," said Cautley. "Everyone can have navigation; more devices; in car units; or web at home. "[TomTom is] rethinking how you take advantage of navigation." TomTom wants to leverage both crowdsourced and probe data to create more accuracy in maps. "[These] new data are giving us tremendous information," said Cautley. "The strategy is a move to provide more dynamic content … Better quality and more value to our customers."

TomTom: “Tele Atlas” Not for Sale

Rumors were swirling that it was. One cited this strange logic: "location-specific content has lost some of its lustre due the rise of Web sites and services such as Twitter, foursquare and Facebook."

But, executive committee member Taco Titulaer told Reuters on Thursday the data part of the company is not for sale. "Our content assets are core to our strategy and product offering," said Titulaer.

- Reuters

My Take on Coast Going to Microsoft

Since Tuesday’s podcast was about the expansion of user input into geodatasets, the news Tuesday afternoon that OpenStreetMap’s founder Steve Coast has joined Microsoft’s Bing Mobile Team seemed serendipitous. But, that was not the only news about OSM: Microsoft will provide imagery to that crowdsourced mapping project.

James Fee was the first out of the gate with this prediction about the future on his blog:

Between the OSM mappers, MapQuest, Microsoft and all the others who are part of the open project; I see no way OSM doesn’t become the dominate [dominant] mapping data source for all users moving forward.  And you know who wins, everyone who wants free and open data. 

That’s bold. And, he may be right. But, I’m not as convinced. Why will Microsoft’s participation in OSM matter so much? First off, what is its participation? For now, per the Bing Maps blog here’s what we know:

As a Principal Architect for Bing Mobile, Steve will help develop better mapping experiences for our customers and partners, and lead efforts to engage with OpenStreetMap and other open source and open data projects.  As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing’s global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM.

Those two first steps are good ones. That imagery can be "traced" by folks anywhere in the world to help fill out and enhance the basemap. And, as many have found, the tools for editing OSM (Potlatch and JOSM) can be cranky. I’ve heard the ArcGIS extension for ArcGIS can be a challenge, for some, too.

But can Microsoft’s efforts activate a larger active community than OpenStreetMap, Cloudmade, and most recently AOL have? Will those individuals have the passion worldwide to do the work that’s been done so well in Germany and the UK (two countries were AOL uses OSM data in MapQuest)? Can Microsoft as a company rally the volunteer troops? Do you recall Microsoft’s last misguided crowdsourced effort? The Windows 7 launch parties? (See The Guardian coverage, but I just recall all the laughs I heard on Buzz Out Loud.) How about its effort to pay users to use Bing as a search tool? No, to date, Microsoft has not inspired the kind of loyalty and devotion and respect as some other players.

While some continue to "hate on" Google for its MapMaker efforts (GPS Business News noted its disapproval this week), others think that the MapMaker data is in fact the source for Google’s US datasets (SlashGeo offered that incorrect assumption). While there are always naysayers about Esri, I continue to be impressed by how many organizations are lining up to fill its Community Maps Program (map of them).

I think one or two more tools are needed for OSM to the coverage and quality required to be useful worldwide. One tool/technology needs to provide passive data capture. A company like waze, for example, that can encourage users to simply switch on their phone and be tracked would be a nice addition. So, too, would a company with a tool to integrate and quickly conflate all the data that come in. The reason that TomTom (Tele Atlas) and Nokia (NAVTEQ) are now "poo-pooed" is simply because their datasets are dated. Why are they dated? Because they are vetted, which takes time. The company that can provide that quick but "good enough" filter to to pull the mix of data from its various sources and pump it back out to users will win. I don’t think OSM has all the data inputs needed, nor the paid and unpaid staff needed, nor the smart software needed to win this competition. Not yet anyway, but clearly their backers are slowly adding to their dowry.

And, one final thought. I’ve seen many very smart, successful and well-known geospatial practitioners join big important companies with big plans and big ideas. And, I’ve seen them work hard, bang their heads against the wall, and ultimately leave for the next opportunity. And, I’ve seen other very smart geospatial practitioners do their work at small companies, have some sway in those companies, and have impacts on our industry that many of us cannot even identify.  I do wish Steve Coast, as I did the many to whom I refer here, the best of luck in his new position.

Podcast: A Hallway Conversation with Mano Marks, Developer Advocate, Google

Adena Schutzberg, executive editor, interviewed Google developer advocate Mano Marks about the geoweb and the challenges of aligning it with the special properties, specifically page ranking, possible on the Web. This conversation is one in a continuing series of conversations with geospatial insiders and outsiders.

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here’s the index.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Google and TomTom Execs Address Google Navigation for Android

I dug this up in The Boston Globe writer Hiawatha Bray’s overview of the Droid (which he says is cool, but no iPhone killer) and its free navigation app:

During a visit to Cambridge yesterday, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt was unapologetic. “Google is a disruptor,’’ Schmidt said. “We would argue that this disruption has a very strong consumer benefit. . . . As long as we’re on the side of making consumers empowered, we’ll be fine.’’

TomTom spokeswoman Kaitlin Ambrogio told me her company will be fine as well. “We believe there are opportunities for all of us,’’ Ambrogio said. Indeed, TomTom might launch a hugely successful Web search company, make billions of dollars, and start giving away their maps. Pretty far-fetched, I admit. But it’s been done.

- Boston Globe