Tomtom Go 730&930: Interview With Jocelyn Vigreux, Tomtom Inc.

GPS Business News: how has been the year 2007 for TomTom in the United States?
Jocelyn Vigreux: it has been very well for us. As a total the market has been ten million units in 2007 and we are now the number two brand for PNDs. According to NPD Group we have reached 27-28 percent market share in the fourth quarter of the year. We have been making good progress and we really outperformed the market: while the PND category growth was 333%, we grew 579%.

GPS BN: How does it look for 2008? What will be the size of the PND market?
JV: it looks good. First it is important to understand the United States is still a low penetrated market for navigation. There is less than 6% penetration: 14 million PNDs have been sold to date and there are 240 million cars on the road. To answer your question, my best guess for the U.S. PND market is 17 to 20 million units in 2008. If we assume 18 million units sold in 2008, the PND penetration is expected to still be 13% of cars, so it still leave us with an untapped market for the years to come.

GPS BN: And what kind of price decline do you forecast for 2008?
JV: We expect the average selling price will not go down as it did in 2007. The ASP will be much more stable than it was last year. We also expect an influx of new technologies fueling the high end of the market will contribute to bring more stability.

GPS BN: and what are you announcing today?
JV: Today we are announcing the new TomTom G0 730 and GO 930. For these products we have completely revamped the outside and added many novelties including three major software innovations to previous products. The first one is voice address input. With this feature the user taps the spoken address button then speaks the destination and is routed through it without touching the screen.

The second innovation is TomTom IQ Routes which is a new intelligent routing based on real-world, historical average speeds. With TomTom IQ Routes, route calculation will be now based on historical average speeds per road segment instead of maximum posted speeds. It provides intelligent routing based on weekday and weekend averages. The benefit is twofold: first it improves the Estimated Time of Arrival, second it significantly improve the proposed routing.

The third improvement to our software is advanced lane guidance. The TomTom GO 730 and 930 show the number of lanes, the direction of each one, which lane the driver should be in for the upcoming turn and what the lane divider markings look like. Additionally we have 3D images for complex junctions and Signpost information with route numbers & road destinations.