Tele Atlas: История картографической компании и поглощение TomTom

Dutch mapping company

Tele Atlas is a Netherlands based company founded in 1984 which delivers digital maps and other dynamic content for navigation and location based services, including personal and in car navigation systems, and provides data used in a wide range of mobile and Internet map applications. Since 30 July 2008, the company has been a wholly owned subsidiary of automotive navigation system manufacturer TomTom.

The company provides maps, some sourced from other mapping companies, covering two hundred countries around the world, providing mapping data and "Map Enhancement Products" such as points of interest and address points. Clients of Tele Atlas include makers of automotive navigation systems as well as mobile and internet companies which provide mapping services. The firm also supplies data to clients in the public and private sectors who rely on geographic information.

The company keeps its data up to date in part through a fleet of dozens of mapping vans equipped with "six cameras, two side sweeping lasers and a GPS navigation device." The vans capture about three photos per second while traveling at normal speeds, resulting in more than 100 million images per year from each van; the images are stored on one of two hard disk drives within a metal cabinet inside the van, drives that hold about two weeks of data. to which there can be links from the supports pages of the products. Company is provided the 25% quality in their geospatial database.

In May 2000, Tele Atlas acquired Etak, Inc., a US based vendor of automotive navigation system equipment, digital maps, and mapping software, from Sony Corporation, which became Tele Atlas North America. Etak, Inc. ceased to exist as a separate company soon after.

On 23 July 2007, a €2 billion offer for the company by navigation system maker TomTom was accepted by the Tele Atlas board. This was then trumped by a €2.3 billion offer from United States based rival Garmin on 31 October 2007 initiating a bidding war for Tele Atlas. TomTom responded by upping their bid to €2.9 billion, an offer which was again approved by the board of Tele Atlas. Garmin had been expected to counterbid once again: with Tele Atlas' main global rival Navteq subject to a takeover bid from Nokia, the company had stated that it did not wish both companies to fall into the hands of rivals. On 4 December 2007, TomTom shareholders approved the takeover. The European Commissioner for Competition cleared the takeover in May 2008, and it closed in June.

Historically, Internet mapping providers have utilized map data from a variety of vendors. Given the growth in usage of Internet mapping portals, the map suppliers have competed fiercely for that business. On 30 June 2008, Tele Atlas announced a five year agreement to continue to supply data to Google Maps. Under the deal, Tele Atlas was to have access to corrections and updates to the data made by the Google Maps community. Roughly a year later, in October 2009, Google discontinued using Tele Atlas maps in the United States and began collecting map feedback from consumers for their own use. Shortly thereafter, Google announced Google Maps Navigation for Android, which provides turn by turn navigation, similar to the functionality provided by TomTom devices, for free as part of Android. In January 2009, Microsoft announced that it had expanded its agreement with Navteq to utilize its map data for 74 countries, in addition to licensing a variety of additional content. As a result, consumers in the Internet segment are likely to be exposed to Tele Atlas data less frequently.