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Between smartphone traffic apps like Waze and new generations of cars that have traffic-data access built-in, portable navigation devices from the likes of TomTom are surely feeling the squeeze. With its new GO product line announced Friday, TomTom's giving away its premium traffic data, which the company says covers 99.9 percent of all roads in the U.S. and includes data crowdsourced from more than 150 million drivers in North America and 350 million users worldwide. By comparison, the popular smartphone app Waze, bought by Google last summer, is estimated to use data from a mere 50 million users worldwide.
Calling it "our crown jewel," Tom Murray, TomTom's vice president of marketing, acknowledged that the company's HD Traffic data up to now "has been available only for a price, and prohibitive," requiring one of the company's GPS devices and a SIM card, plus a data plan. Renamed simply TomTom Traffic, that data will now be free with the higher-end GO devices (and available on trial with lower-cost models). Instead of requiring a data plan, TomTom will offer an iOS/Android app to stream the data through your smartphone to the GO device.
The higher-end TomTom GO devices will offer touchscreens and voice recognition.
During a briefing with TechHive, TomTom provided research showing that 33 percent of drivers who use navigation have a portable device, but 17 percent have a phone app. That's a fast gain, given how short a time traffic apps have existed compared to navigation devices.
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