You know how TomTom is moving to a
WebKit-based UI with its new flagship
Go Live 1000 satnav? Well, there's good reason for it. While TomTom called it a "platform for innovation" at Tuesday's press event in Amsterdam, going so far as to show a few in-house developed prototype apps for Facebook, Wikipedia, and live street cams, it stopped short of revealing its true plan: an app store it can cuddle and call its own.
Pocket-lint had a sit down with TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn who revealed TomTom's plans to launch the app store by the end of the year. Apps that will easily migrate to its in-car platform, and to and from other WebKit based devices. In essence, it's TomTom's consumer-focused survival plan against free turn-by-turn offerings from Google and Nokia. While there's no doubt that dedicated satnav devices offer greater functionality and better performance compared to their part-time smartphone navigating competitors, selling the average consumer (not hardened road warriors) on the need for two devices won't be easy. Besides, are Facebook updates really that critical when driving? Pics of the Wikipedia and street cam sample apps after the break.
posted April 29th 2010 8:29AM
Wow, this is the stupidest thing i have seen today, including the teddybear case for the Nintendo DS
another example of old, dated companies who do not understand social networking (and where it should and shouldn't be) whatsoever.
well they must not be wanting many California customers. thats basically in the same category as texting and its laws against texting-and-driving out here. If TomTom was going to do an app store, they should have made the apps be more integrated within the GPS. sort of like Layar's add-ons will be. So if your being navigated to a location and on the way you can see your friends Loopt and Twitter locations. Facebook could have even used this opportunity to do something really creative to get into the location war in a way thats completely different than Foursquare and Gowalla's approach.
TomTom should have been more innovative and focused more on ways to prevent texting-and-driving accidents. All of technology is out there, nobody is just putting the pieces together correctly
I am not so impressed with this release.They could add something like a portable TV in the GPS. So when you are driving a short distance and know the way, those not driving can watch TV..Maybe.http://www.abt.com/product/45063/FLO-TV-PTV350.html. But a better idea would be to collaborate & develop something cool for the smartphones.
The traffic camera views will be great as verification of traffic conditions.
What engadget missed is that the apps will be mainly tied to travel and to the car itself a la the Ford Sync system. Ford has sold more than 2 million of those in the last year.
These TomTom systems will be customized for resale by auto makers.
Wow, what's more distracting than doing facebook while driving? What a stupid idea.
Um, good luck with that plan. I'm willing to bet, however, this is about the last time that we'll hear about the TomTom platform, with the possible exception of when they stuff the whole idea as being nuts. I'm kinda reminded here of a salmon attempting to swim upstream...