inspirator schreef op 9 februari 2014 19:32:
TomTom is the next Waze.
“There are only a few companies in the world that develop maps, and most of them are worth billions,” said Zilka. Netherlands-based Tele Atlas, for example, was bought by navigation system manufacturer TomTom in 2008 for 2.9 billion euros — after that company won a bidding war with Garmin. In 2007, Nokia bought Chicago-based Navteq for $8.1 billion. And Israeli mapping company Telmap, though far smaller than Tele Atlas and Navteq, was bought out by Intel in 2011 for about $350 million.
The reason these companies sell for so much stems from the fact that map data is the basis for all geolocation apps. “Without maps none of these location apps would work very well,” said Zilka. In addition, a lot of work went into developing the maps; the companies had armies of cartographers and programmers who input the data into the map system and kept it updated, and developed turn-by-turn instruction sets that Tomtom and Garmin users came to rely on.
Read more: How 'disruption' won Waze its $1 billion exit | The Times of Israel
www.timesofisrael.com/how-disruption-...