GPS News: Weekly Round-up
Posted by Richard on Friday, September 18, 2009 in Industry News • Weekly Round-up • (0) Comments • Permalink
What a week it’s been in the world of GPS. I hope you’ve managed to stay on top of it all but with so much activity I understand it can sometimes be hard to know which way to turn.
I’ll try to get you pointing back in the right direction by going over some of the top GPS news that made the headlines this week.
At the Frankfurt Motor Show, TomTom’s managing director, Giles Shrimpton unveiled details about the Blue&Me – TomTom device. The collaboration between car manufacture, Fiat and GPS manufacture, TomTom, has giving us this highly anticipated integrated information system as a portable navigation device. Speaking about the Blue&Me – TomTom, Shrimpton said, “The fact that the device will display the TomTom logo is testimony to our reputation for excellent navigation in an industry where automotive manufacturers rarely allow other logos to appear in their cars."
TomTom also teamed up with Sanyo this week. Sanyo, a global provider of consumer electronics will join forces with TomTom to bring built-in audio and video navigation to the auto manufactures. President of Sanyo, Nobuaki Matsuoka said, “We will harness our strengths together with TomTom’s strengths and work hand-in-hand to develop, produce and supply car manufacturers with built-in car navigation systems which can take on global market competition.”
With TomTom announcing so many partnerships, it would appear that Garmin wanted in on the action too. Garmin announced that their new Garmin nuvi 1690 would have AT&T as their wireless provider. The wireless data service will be free to the customer for the first two years but would thereafter cost an additional $5. The feature will allow Garmin users access to their nuLink service. This gives the customer on-the-go access to Google, weather, fuel prices, traffic and more.
We also have a couple of new devices to look forward to a little later this year. Announcing their up-and-coming devices, TomTom led the way with their new XXL range. TomTom’s XXL 530S and XXL 540S feature larger screens with easier-to-read displays, making life less stressful for driver. Jocelyn Vigreux, president of TomTom Inc. said, “The introduction of the XXL range is in line with our strategy to increase the depth and breadth of our product offerings, based on customer feedback." The new TomTom XXL devices will be in retailers across the United States and Canada in October 2009. The TomTom XXL 530S is priced at $279.95, while the XXL 540S is $299.95.
Mio too has a new rage of device hitting the stores. Their new budget GPS line, The Mio Moov M300 and M400 will be out later this month. To get your hands on one of these devices it will cost you a mere $119.99 for the M300 or $149.99 for the M400. Don’t be fooled into thinking that due to the low price either one of these devices will be just a shell of a GPS, because these devices come loaded with features. Both devices include text-to-speech with spoken street names, lane guidance, 4 million POIs, predictive keyword search, preloaded maps of America and NavPix photo navigation.