When Nokia decided to make Ovi Maps free, including the navigation and route planning, there was a lot of discussion about what this would mean for companies like Tom Tom, who make dedicated GPS units. Well now TomTom’s chief, Harold Goodijn, has announced their intention to have an “App Store” on the units, to go along with the new Operating System software powering the device.
Read on in the full article.
What a stupid article with so much misleading title!! how on earth can tomtom join ovi store, next step they gonna do their own OS and start competing with "Nuvi Phone". Seriously, they may offer something, but they are totally out of the league.
Noted on the headline, that's now updated. To be clear they are launching their own app store, not joining up with Nokia's Ovi Store.
This is a smart move from TomTom. Last year's announcements from Google to introduce 'Turn by Turn' navigation to the Android phone was not great news for navigation companies. An app store would be logical to capitalise on the wave of location based content/networks now springing up. I for one would like to see where this can go.
But TomTom already have one, I've been using it for years to get map updates, POIs, addons etc.
What's new?
it all depends on the content they deliver through it, I think the though is they may offer more content such as a calendar, or notepad, or mileage tracker, or god know what. This could be offered out to developers to make apps and potentially sell out their products through TomTom.
Lets hope that the large market of 3rd party developers bringing awesome content and functionalisy such as lebazar or Tyre get on board with this.
GO TOMTOM!!! 😮)
Ford Sync Will Soon Let You Control Your Mobile Apps by Voice
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ford_sync_mobile_apps_voice_control_developer_sdk.php
Ford's Sync aims at using apps to extend seamlessly the apps one already has on the mobile.
TomoTom is planning on apps, but so is Ford with its award winning Sync. Thus, Tomtom will find itself pushed out of the market by the two natural hardware providers. Why would anyone have a third hardware beside the mobile and the car?
TomTom is indeed entering a very competetive market, developer attention. While there are a lot of TomToms out there, there are even more smartphones phones out they by at least an order of magnitude and probably 2 orders. They might have a change if they will use a common platform (like Qt or widgets) and if they let developers keeps lots of revenue.
Another possibilitiy is to not sell apps, but routes. There are lots of people interested in things like rallying or driving along very scenic routes.
this article doesn't really say what apps they are looking at having?