We heard back at IFA that Sony was making the absolutely brilliant move of incorporating a market leading navigational system into its Xplod line of in-dash A/V units, and now that love is being shipped across the Atlantic (or the Pacific, if you’re t…
Category Archives: tomtom
Darth Vader Drives You Through the Dark Side of the Road [GPS]
TomTom has decided to celebrate Star Wars Day—May 4th—with a Darth Vader voice for their GPS devices, complete with Imperial March playback, rattling lightsabers, and flying TIE Fighters. And there…
Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope
As everyone knows, Garmin and TomTom have their backs against the ropes in a fight to remain relevant in an age of free GPS turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones (thanks Google and Nokia). While dedicated personal navigators are almost always superior to their converged competition, the gap has certainly narrowed such that it’s become difficult to justify another device when an increasing number of people already carry a fine navigation device in their pockets. But that’s just gut instinct talking, where’s the hard evidence? Certainly not speculative stock prices. A good place to start is in forward-looking financial statements like the one Garmin, the leading navigation device maker in the US, just issued. Gamin says that it expects competition to cause prices to decline by about 10% in the personal navigation device (PND) industry putting pressure on margins, and thus profits, in 2010. It also sees flat or slightly declining revenue over the same period. Fortunately for Garmin, it has a diversified product offering that includes the Nuvifone. However, Garmin admits to being disappointed by sales of the handset that “won” our Editor’s Choice award for Worst Gadget of the Year.
Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though. Garmin has a pair of Nuvifones in the chute including the Android-powered A50. And its Q4 results of $1.43 per share easily beat analyst expectations of 95 cents a share. Even TomTom surprised many last week with a 1% increase in Q4 revenue and net profit of €75 million compared to a €989 million loss a year ago. So there's some hope left for the dedicated PND market… but not much.
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS
Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Also posted in financials, garmin, google, google navigation, GoogleNavigation, GPS, Maps, navigation, Nokia, nuvifone, ovi, pnd Tagged greader Comments closed
TomTom Go I-90 integrates into any dashboard, brings radio ‘infotainment’
TomTom has been on a mission to keep itself relevant as smartphones increasingly start to overstep on its territory, and the GO I-90 is another move in its counteroffensive plan. Capable of slotting into the double DIN slot usually reserved for in-car radio / music players, its big selling point is that it integrates into your dashboard yet is still capable of being moved around like a discrete nav unit. You wouldn’t be left decrying the loss of your radio either, with the GO I-90 sporting FM (with RDS support) and AM reception, USB support for MP3 players including iPods, and a promised compatibility with an “extensive” list of phones for handsfree calling — unfortunately, the poorly worded PR makes no mention of Bluetooth so we’re not sure how they’ll pull that off. Throw in a guarantee to receive the latest maps, TomTom’s Map Share for crowdsourced routes, and a Help-Me! emergency menu, and you get a pretty comprehensive product. Shame about that €599 (about $893) sticker then. Available in Europe in December.
Filed under: GPS
TomTom Go I-90 integrates into any dashboard, brings radio ‘infotainment’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Also posted in car, dashboard, dashboard integration, DashboardIntegration, go i-90, GoI-90, GPS, handsfree, in-car, in-car entertainment, In-carEntertainment, infotainment, integrated navigation system, IntegratedNavigationSystem, map share, MapShare, navigation, SatNav, tomtom go, tomtom go i-90, TomtomGo, TomtomGoI-90 Tagged greader Comments closed
