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NaviGadget: Digital map and dynamic content provider Tele Atlas have just announced Tele Atlas HD Traffic.

Tele Atlas HD Traffic contains up-to-the-minute traffic information from multiple data sources which includes GPS readings from personal navigation devices, mobile phone signals, and road sensors.

Tele Atlas HD Traffic takes all this data to provide – in real time – latest traffic conditions. Some of the features Tele Atlas HD Traffic can be delivered to any connected, mobile device and features:

• Delivery of “live” congestion information
• Extremely accurate positioning of traffic jams
• High update frequency, with fresh data delivered every three minutes
• Road speeds, length and location data to deliver the complete picture of the traffic congestion
• Content based on a proven approach to collecting, processing and distributing real-time traffic data

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Electronista: Digital map and dynamic content creator Tele Atlas on Wednesday announced it will soon offer 3D, photorealistic images of major European city centers called Advanced City Models.

Meant for in-car and portable navigation systems, the highly detailed images match the actual surroundings and help users find locations and services.

The images were developed in conjunction with Norway-based BLOM, which provided Tele Atlas with aerial imagery of the city centers. With its Advanced City Models, Tele Atlas is hoping users will find navigation experience improved, as it will be easier to recognize city centers, buildings and landmarks through a simple glance and regardless of whether they’re driving or on foot.

By June, Tele Atlas will make 40 major European cities available and add more in quarterly releases. Sometime in 2010, Tele Atlas is expecting to have hundreds of cities mapped, including those from North America and Asia Pacific regions.

Tele Atlas has been providing 3D maps for Mio and Pioneer GPS units, as well as Sony’s PSP, since 2006.

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TWICE: GPS map maker Tele Atlas has expanded the inclusion of map changes from GPS users in its latest map release.

The newest release, used by makers of GPS equipment, includes actual changes in the road location or the inclusion of new roads that GPS users helped identify. An earlier Tele Atlas map update in October was the first to include user changes, but it only included road “attributes” such as direction and road names, it said.

A little more than 10 percent of map information changes each year, requiring updates, said the company.

All user-suggested changes are verified by Tele Atlas before being included in the new map release, said the company.

Tele Atlas maps are used by such GPS makers as TomTom and Pioneer.

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GPS Business News: TomTom today announced a reduction of its global workforce – excluding Tele Atlas – of 7% or 115 staff as part of a cost cutting programme aimed at “aligning its cost structure to reflect to the current challenging consumer spending environment”.

Two days ago TomTom lowered its revenue and profit forecast. Its revenue is now expected to be between €1.66 billion and €1.68 billion instead of €1.75 billion to €1.85 billion.

The Dutch company said that “today’s announcement does not affect Tele Atlas where reductions are already in progress which will lead to annualised savings of €35 million.” Tele Atlas announced 125 job cuts last month.

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Times Online: A new generation of in-car navigation systems will take sat nav from being simply an electronic mapping device to being a driving instructor, telling motorists when to change gear, at what speed to take a corner and even how to drive more economically.

The systems, due to be installed in cars within three years, will present detailed three-dimensional images of the road ahead showing obstructions, gradients and narrow stretches – potentially saving country lanes from the curse of misdirected lorries.

The Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (Adas), under development by leading sat nav manufacturers, will be a significant advance on the current devices which have become almost ubiquitous on dashboards over the past five years.

“The 3-D mapping taking place now will allow us to bring huge advances in the information that sat navs can provide for drivers,” said Rik Temmink, vice-president for global product management at Tele Atlas, the mapping division of TomTom, the market leader in sat navs.

The new systems are being developed by TomTom and Navteq.

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InformationWeek: Google beefed up its position in the digital navigation world by signing a long-term agreement with Tele Atlas that gives the search engine company access to Tele Atlas maps and content in more than 200 countries.

The deal could also eventually place Google and its Android Open Handset Alliance in stronger competition with Nokia and its Navteq navigation technology.

The Google-Tele Atlas agreement covers Google’s map-based services and navigation offerings in the mobile, online, and desktop universes, including Google Maps and Google Earth services and some mobile applications like Google Maps for Mobile.

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GPS Business News: TomTom announced that it is providing all map updates made by its customers through the Map Share feedback to Tele Atlas. “After extensive verification of these millions of customer suggestions, the results will be made available in map releases to all Tele Atlas partners in the Fourth quarter of 2008”, said TomTom-Tele Atlas.

“As promised, the transfer of this feedback marks the first tangible deliverable following TomTom’s acquisition of Tele Atlas,” said Harold Goddijn, CEO of the new combined entity. “It will ensure that everybody can benefit from this community feedback, and the amount we have received is staggering. On average, by the end of 2008, if you drive anywhere for one hour with a Tele Atlas map enhanced by Map Share feedback, your route will be influenced by more than 20 corrections.”

TomTom, in the headline of his press release, claims that “TomTom brings Tele Atlas in contact with 20 million customers”: if not a lie, this is a real stretch of the reality. Last February TomTom announced it reached half a million active users for Map Share within its pool of 15 million TomTom’s customers. With 20 million TomTom customers now, the math is easily done. Obviously, TomTom has been pushing a backward compatibility program to make all existing TomTom’s PNDs compatible with Map Share; so not only new customers can use Map Share but also olders.

Nevertheless, Map Share requires TomTom customers to buy a new map every year which is very far from what the reality is today on the PND market – consumers update their PNDs, not their maps. Therefore every year TomTom will have in one hand more new customers using Map Share; but in the other hand less older customers are using it because they not have bought a new map.

This does not diminish the de facto interest of the Map Share program, but its reach is not as huge as TomTom and Tele Atlas would like us to believe.

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Associated Press: TomTom sealed its takeover bid of digital mapmaker Tele Atlas NV, the Dutch navigational company said.

Amsterdam-based TomTom NV said in a statement it has accumulated more than 97 percent of Tele Atlas shares via open market purchases and from shareholders who tendered to TomTom’s 30 euro per share offer.

TomTom has fought for nearly a year to land Tele Atlas. It had a bidding contest with its U.S. rival Garmin Ltd., intense regulatory scrutiny from the European Union and its own problems internally as the selling price of its products fell sharply.

Although some analysts believe TomTom overpaid for Tele Atlas, the strategic rationale for the deal is clear: a closer integration of maps and the devices that display them.

With control of Tele Atlas’s database, TomTom will be able to use information from its users in the field to improve maps in various ways — including live traffic updates from the field.

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GPS Business News: Speaking at the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris last week, Tele Atlas CEO Alain De Taeye explained that within six months of the Tele Atlas acquisition by TomTom – Tele Atlas shareholders have until May 30 to tender their shares – the company will launch a new generation of products including maps that carry TomTom’s data on driving conditions.

Alain De Taeye explained TomTom has amassed 1 trillion data points, equivalent to driving every road in Europe and the United States a thousand times – information that can improve navigation by choosing a different route depending on the time of day and can also be used for new products.

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Reuters: The acquisition of digital map maker Tele Atlas by TomTom marks a watershed for the industry with vastly more accurate maps and new products, Tele Atlas Chief Executive Alain De Taeye said.

The 2.9 billion-euro takeover by TomTom, Europe’s biggest maker of car navigation devices, was driven by the ambition to combine TomTom’s ability to gather information from users with Tele Atlas’ maps, De Taeye said.

TomTom has gathered extensive data on maps and driving conditions — its users submit about 10,000 corrections to maps every day, and a large number of drivers have also allowed the company to gather anonymous statistical data from their devices.

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NaviGadget: At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Portuguese brand Ndrive presented the latest version of their GPS navigation software for smart phones, symbians, as well as PDAs with Windows Mobile.A nice feature of this navigation software is that it can display 3D renderings of buildings while routing the user. Ndrive uses photographs coming from the Spanish company Blom which specializes in high quality geographical information.

The demo for the software was rather impressive, it is quite smooth, but we’ll have to wait and see if it is really useful. We do not have information on the number of POIs yet but it is planned to be released at the end of March.

One thing to note is that data for all these aerial images takes a lot of space: 2 GB for Madrid for example. Therefore it is necessary to install only certain cities in 3D photographs and let the remainder of the country or Europe be installed in normal graphical mode.

Ndrive uses maps from Tele Atlas. Maps of Europe on DVD will cost 98 €.

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Electronista: GPS device maker Garmin yesterday withdrew its bid to buy map supplier Tele Atlas, opening the door for its primary rival TomTom to make its own deal. The latter firm made its own bid first in July but has since been outbid by Garmin, which claims it has been determined to prevent its competitors from acquiring all the map suppliers themselves and leaving Garmin with no choice but to license GPS maps from a rival. Finland’s cellphone manufacturer Nokia recently bought out another major map provider, Navteq, to supply navigation for its smartphones.

No explanation has been given for the sudden withdrawal, though Garmin’s truce in the bidding war is very likely to be connected to a recent patent dispute settlement between Garmin and TomTom that saw both companies halt lawsuits against each other in exchange for unknown compensation that may include allowing TomTom to buy Tele Atlas. Garmin does not use Tele Atlas maps for most of its GPS navigators and today renewed an agreement with Navteq.

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