Last year, the Dutch company TomTom decided to quit the wearable market after disappointing sales coupled with several executives resigning from the company. After which, the company, in a press statement, announced that it will focus solely on its ‘navigation technologies’ sector. It’s worth mentioning here that, they were once the posterchild of Euronext with a highpoint of €60 per share at the end of 2007, however, at present, they are relatively steady between €7 to €9 per share.
1.5 billion changes in one month!
In this regard, TomTom, known for manufacturing a range of Linux-based satellite navigation hardware has recently announced that, in a month, it has made 1.5 billion changes to its digital maps, which are delivered to TomTom customers on a weekly basis.
Talking about the milestone, 1.5 billion map changes in a month is equal to 49.3 million changes per day, 2.1 million changes per hour, or 570 changes per second. With this updates in July, now the customers have additional access to 1.32 million kilometers of roads, 5.9 million Points of Interest, and 2.6 million Address Points.
Used community inputs, machine learning and AI
According to TomTom, “The milestone is key to the company’s mission to shape the future of mobility in a world that increasingly relies on digital maps as an accurate representation of reality.” In fact, the company made these updates from a community input including millions of map users worldwide, GPS probe data from 550 million connected devices, local map technicians, and mobile mapping vehicle.
Alain De Taeye, Member of TomTom’s Management Board, comments: “The time between a change happening in the real world and this change being reflected in our map is now much shorter than ever before. Every change that happens in our map is quality guaranteed – so not only can we scale beyond other mapmakers, it also comes with the right level of quality for even the most demanding applications.”
The company uses machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform to implement its changes faster for both standard navigation maps and its high definition (HD) maps for autonomous vehicles.
De Taeye continues: “To shape the future of mobility, 1.5 billion changes to our maps in a single month proves the scalability of our unique production platform and brings us a step closer to real-time maps. We’re excited to be driving this future.”
TomTom Go Essential
Following the milestone, TomTom today announced the launch of the TomTom GO Essential, a sat nav system with support for hands-free calling, voice control, Siri speech recognition software compatibility and Google Now service. It is shipped with the maps for 45 European countries and also includes Lifetime Europe Maps and Traffic updates, with a six-month trial period from TomTom Speed Cameras.
The TomTom GO Essential comes in two variants — 5-inch and 6-inch at a price of € 199.95 and € 249.95 respectively. It is now available in Europe on the online store of TomTom and at selected e-tailers, and in the store from the beginning of October.
TomTom GO Basic
A couple of months back, TomTom announced its feature-packed sat nav dubbed as TomTom GO Basic. Besides driving to the destination, this device comes with compelling hardware, Lifetime Maps, and Traffic updates, with a three-month trial of TomTom Speed Cameras.
By connecting the device to your smartphone, TomTom GO Basic also reads notification from your smartphone aloud like Text messages. Furthermore, it discovers your driving pattern and predicts when the user likely to drive to the frequent destination as well.
Mike Schoofs, Managing Director, TomTom Consumer, comments: “With the new TomTom GO Basic, we’re democratizing powerful TomTom navigation for drivers everywhere. We’ve managed to bring the best of our technologies – from our famous traffic service to smartphone connectivity and over-the-air Wi-Fi updates – all packed into a dedicated navigation device that’s our most affordable one yet.”
The 5-inch or 6-inch fully-interactive touchscreen TomTom GO Basic is available on TomTom’s online store and at selected e-retailers and in-store at a price of €159 for 5-inch version and €179 for 6-inch variant.
Both the TomTom GO devices can create routes, check live traffic and save routes from your smartphone, laptop or PC through TomTom MyDrive. Moreover, users can discover the world’s most beautiful driving routes from TomTom’s route sharing community and TomTom Road Trips.
For more updates, stay tuned to Silicon Canals.