TomTom 2014 Annual Report Download - page 7

TomTom empowers movement. Every day, millions of people around the world depend on TomTom to make smarter decisions.
We design and develop innovative products that make it easy for people to keep moving towards their goals. Best known for
being a global leader in navigation and mapping products, TomTom also creates GPS sport watches, as well as state-of-the-art
fleet management solutions and industry-leading location-based products.
TomTom was founded in 1991 and has grown from a Dutch-based start-up company into a leading multi-national, global brand. The original
founders remain committed to the business and together with the 4,000 employees are focused on driving innovation and helping people
achieve their goals.
In 1991, TomTom began a journey that would change the way people drive, beginning with software development for B2B mobile applications
and personal digital assistants (PDAs) for consumers. In just two years, TomTom became the market leader in PDA software with navigation
applications such as EnRoute (later renamed RoutePlanner) and Citymaps. By June 2002, the TomTom Navigator was launched, providing
customers across Europe with an easy-to-use, affordable navigation solution for the first time.
A year after the successful launch of TomTom Navigator, it was clear there was a strong demand for an all-in-one, easy-to-use, portable
navigation device. TomTom recruited an experienced hardware team ready to take on this challenge. The result was not just a new product,
but also an entirely new category in consumer electronics: the Portable Navigation Device (PND). The PND became the fastest selling consumer
technology device in history, as the trusted travel companion for millions of drivers. Demand grew rapidly across Europe and North America
and in the ten years since its launch, over 77 million TomTom PND devices have been sold in 35 countries.
In the years that followed, TomTom continued to innovate and create new products, both in the B2C and the B2B segments. Its consumer
product portfolio was extended with its own branded GPS sport watches, which enable runners, cyclists, swimmers and golfers to keep moving
towards their goals. A number of new businesses were acquired including Datafactory AG (which formed TomTom Telematics), Applied
Generics (which formed TomTom Traffic), the automotive engineering team from the Siemens R&D division (which formed TomTom's
Automotive business) and Tele Atlas, one of the largest digital map-making companies in the world (which formed TomTom Maps). These
acquisitions provided specialist data, technology, knowledge, and resources to deliver a best-in-class navigation and location-based experience
for our customers.
Today, TomTom's B2B activities are focused on fleet management solutions, embedded navigation systems and location-based solutions.
TomTom Telematics grew into a leading global provider of fleet management and vehicle telematics solutions, reaching an installed base of
464,000 vehicles at the end of 2014, and is recognised as the fastest growing telematics provider in Europe today. TomTom is set to
revolutionise the way maps will be delivered, with the introduction of its new map-making engine that provides incremental map updates,
enabling near real-time maps. With the deployment of this important technological innovation, TomTom will be uniquely positioned to fully
address the need for highly accurate and always up-to-date maps, enabling its customers to lead the future of Highly Automated Driving.
Together with its state-of-the-art real-time traffic information and navigation software, TomTom's products are sold to customers across
various markets, reaching 800 million people around the world every day.
TOMTOM'S ACTIVITIES AT A GLANCE
Core technologies
TomTom's core technology assets are maps, traffic and navigation. These assets underly many of TomTom's products, and are used in PNDs,
embedded navigation systems, smartphone applications, and web-based applications.
Maps TomTom provides global map coverage with fully navigable maps for 126 countries. Its maps with voice-guided navigation are
available in 46 unique languages. Map-making at TomTom is about efficiently dealing with changes and the increasing use of
our state-of-the-art transactional map-making engine will enable TomTom to deliver high quality map content with short delivery
cycles. TomTom is the leader in the use of probe traces in quality map-making and in handling consumer feedback. Today, over
12 trillion probe traces have been collected and over 500,000 map edits are processed each day.
Traffic TomTom creates real-time and historic traffic information for highways, major roads and secondary roads. Its traffic service is
available in over 40 countries and it provides drivers highly accurate measurements of traffic jams and delays for better route
calculation and expected times of arrival (ETAs). TomTom uses a wide range of sources to generate real-time traffic information;
an important source of traffic data comes from its own community input that delivers over 5 billion speed measurements per
day. TomTom's traffic technology intelligently combines the data from all available sources into a database with both traffic flow and incident
data for the entire road network covered.
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