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Tag: TomTom

  • Mapmaker TomTom Lowers Forecasts As Chips Shortage Weighs

    Mapmaker TomTom Lowers Forecasts As Chips Shortage Weighs

    Dutch navigation and digital mapping company TomTom on Thursday cut its 2021 outlook, amid a global shortage in semiconductor chips that has disrupted auto supply chains and could eat into its revenues from carmakers. TomTom now anticipates revenues of 500-530 million euros ($592-$627 million), compared to the 520-570 range it had previously guided, and cut its free cash flow guidance from around 6% to around 5%.

    The company, which has posted a quarterly net loss for the last two years, reported a loss of 23.6 million euros – deeper than the 15 million analysts had predicted.

    “When we gave our guidance early this year we knew the semiconductor shortage could have an effect, but it is very difficult to know when the worst part is over and we start to see recovery,” finance chief Taco Titulaer told Reuters in an interview.

    Titulaer now expects it will take until at least the end of the year for automotive supply chains to start normalizing, though the situation should improve from the third quarter.

    The shortage has had the twin effect of cutting car production, he added, and pushing manufacturers to prioritize simpler cars that use fewer chips.

    In the second quarter, TomTom nevertheless saw revenues from its automotive business jump 18% compared to last year, when the first wave of lockdowns shut down large parts of the industry.

    Major carmakers have again had to cut back production this year due to the coronavirus-sparked chips shortage – including major TomTom customers such as Stellantis.

    Titulaer said that though volumes of car sales were showing strong improvement on 2020, the previous year had been “quite dire”.

    With volumes still below 2019 levels, he said it could take a couple quarters for these to get back to normal.

  • Will last night’s GPS date-based rollover ?

    Will last night’s GPS date-based rollover ?

    Most likely you won’t be affected, but due to the strange way that Global Positioning Systems (GPS) measure time, some devices were at risk of being reset yesterday at 7:59 pm EDT. GPS systems affected could be reset back to January 6th, 1980. This is a risk because devices using GPS measure time by counting weeks, but they only have enough storage to count 1,024 weeks (nearly 20 years).

    The last time GPS systems were in this position was back in August 1999. Most of the public had never even heard of GPS back then, and it wasn’t until apps like Google Maps brought GPS into consumers’ hands that the public became aware of it.

    We wouldn’t be too consumed with angst. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber and Infrastructure division says that as long as your device is less than ten years old, or if you have updated this device over the years, your GPS driven app should be safe to use. In other words, if you are using a 2008 T-Mobile G1 as your daily driver for some reason, and never installed any Google Maps updates, the app might not be of much help today. Mapping and navigation firm TomTom said on its website that those who frequently update their devices have nothing to worry about, but others could find it impossible to navigate using GPS.

    The DHS’ Cyber and Infrastructure unit notes that “A nanosecond error in GPS Time can equate to one foot of position (ranging) error.” In other words, if you are counting on a GPS driven device or app to get you from point “A” to point “B,” blindly following the directions on an affected device could land you at point “C.”

    Many industries depend on GPS these days, including some that weren’t around ten years ago like ride sharing (Uber, Lyft). Considering how much more important GPS is to the global economy these days, newer devices have been updated and can now count weeks using 13 bits of data instead of 10. This means that you shouldn’t have to worry about the GPS on your mobile device resetting until 2176.

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  • TomTom IQ Maps Makes Global Premiere In India With MG Hector

    TomTom IQ Maps Makes Global Premiere In India With MG Hector

    The MG Hector is still a few weeks away from hitting the market but the SAIC-owned brand has taken the wraps off the car’s connectivity and IT services. In a bid to offer a first-in-segment connected car, the MGHector sees the company bring several big names in IT and services together to create its i-smart platform. Besides Microsoft, Cisco, Nuance et al, there is also the world’s leading name in navigation systems – TomTom. And a unique offering from the Netherlands based player is an immediate area-only self-updating new navigation system called IQ Maps. Speaking carandbike Tsjerk-Friso Roelfzema, VP Automotive – Europe & Asia, TomTom said, “You don’t have to do anything, plug in a new CD or DVD, a USB, or go to a dealer. It’s automatically updated in the background, and not just only automatically updated, but only what is relevant to the driver. So we are here in Delhi today, you don’t want to have the updates of your map let’s say in Pune, it’s not relevant. So we update what is relevant to you.”

    TomTom’s self-updating new navigation system called IQ Maps will be introduced with the MG Hector

    The IQ Maps idea is simple. The car will have embedded maps for the whole country as is. But these maps get outdated quickly; especially in a country like India here our road systems are constantly undergoing detours or changes due to fresh construction or improvements in infrastructure. IQ Maps helps the car to provide you with updated and current maps, without worrying about those kinds of changes. And yes the system is in-dash – and will work through the big 10.4″ screen on MG’s i-smart unit.

    It also gives you real-time traffic updates, and will reroute your guidance if there is a traffic jam for instance. It also takes into account any last minute road closures or other changes like say, construction activity. The map is updated accordingly, and is fed with a combination of live and historical data inputs to achieve its levels of accuracy. This has been made possible not just because of the innovation at TomTom’s research centres in Europe and also in Pune, India.

    Of course the enabler here is also the vehicle itself, which would have to provide connectivity, since this is an in-car navigation system and not an external device or phone app. And that connectivity on the MG Hector will come courtesy the embedded eSim card the car will have from the start. This in turn will provide data services to not just update maps and conduct live searches for destinations or points of interest, but also stream music, browse the net or access your email. The eSim will also be the way to contact MG’s call centre where a concierge service can hep you find destinations, or more importantly provide first response in the case of an emergency. And the good news is MG has said the data plan for the buyer if the car will be free.

    TomTom plans to develop the product further both in terms of offering even more layers of sophistication, and also see if it can be offered in standalone navigation devices or as a phone app. But there is another potential area where it could be even more relevant. Roelfzema says, “It is very important today in normal navigation, but especially when you talk about autonomous driving, you really want to know if the road has changed if your car is driving itself. And that’s really important. We need to see when the rest is following, but it is a very exciting moment also for us.”

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  • TomTom loses Volvo contract

    TomTom loses Volvo contract

    Dutch navigation firm TomTom said on Tuesday it had lost a contract with automaker Volvo. The company said the contract to provide location and navigation services to Volvo, which was announced in 2016, had been ended before it was due to go into force in 2019. That fed into concerns of critics who said a deal Google made last month with Renault, another TomTom customer, meant the company risked being relegated to third place in its main market, with lower margins.

    Volvo could not immediately be reached for comment on the contract. ING analysts said in a trading note that they believe the Swedish automaker had switched to Google, rather than the current leading player in the navigation market, HERE.

    “Now that Google is making inroads, the mapping business has become a three-player market with TomTom, HERE and Google, which is clearly less attractive for TomTom than the two-player market it was before,” they said.

    TomTom shares lost a quarter of their value in one day on Sept. 18 after Google announced a far-reaching supply deal with a group of automakers including Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi.

    Though the Volvo news knocked shares lower, TomTom reported better than expected third-quarter results on Tuesday, with core earnings rising to €62.4 million euro ($72.2 million) from $41.1 million a year earlier.

    Group sales were slightly higher at $254 million euros, from $253 million in the third quarter of 2017.

    While sales of the company’s traditional satellite navigation devices continued to fall, that was offset by sales to automakers and map licensing to customers Apple and Uber. The company also raised its full-year revenue outlook to $984 million from $955 million.

    TomTom this month announced plans to sell its fleet management business, saying it would instead focus its energy on making digital maps used in highly automated driving — the business on which it has pinned its future.

    It said it has seen “strong interest” for the fleet subsidiary, valued at roughly $810 million.

    Harold Goddijn, CEO and co-founder, said recent new deals with PSA Group and BMW showed the viability of the company’s products.

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  • TomTom wins deal to provide Volvo Cars with maps, data

    TomTom wins deal to provide Volvo Cars with maps, data

    TomTom, the Dutch navigation company, said on Wednesday it had won a contract to provide Volvo Cars with real-time maps and traffic data for its vehicles.

    Terms were not disclosed, but the contract is a major win for TomTom, which competes with Google Maps and HERE, the former Nokia unit now owned by Audi, BMW and Daimler.

    TomTom, once known mostly for dashboard-mounted GPS systems, has won a string of contracts for its mapping technology, which it believes will play an important role as car driving becomes increasingly automated.

    Other TomTom customers include Volkswagen, Uber and Apple.

    TomTom’s shares are down more than 30 percent so far this year, declining sharply during the January market sell-off and again in February after issuing a forecast for 5 percent sales growth in 2016 that fell short of market expectations.