[dtech]

They pretty much lost because free (subsidized) alternatives like Google Maps became available, pretty much the same story as Netscape. It probably didn't help that their maps were also incredibly expensive, €100-200 for western Europe in 2005 money.

[alFReD-NSH]

Something that most commenters are missing is that TomTom's most revenue comes from B2B deals, which are mostly deals with automotive companies for car screens experience and also providing maps data for products like Bing Maps.

[scarface74]

And most consumers would much rather have either CarPlay or Android Auto than the crappy software that is made my the manufacturers.

[hulitu]

Android Auto is crap. It only works with Google apps and some third party media players, when it starts. I gave up on it a long time ago.

[DavidPeiffer]

This week I've been trying Android Auto out in a rental car. I'm not impressed so far. Google Maps has worked okay, but Spotify has not. I don't know where the line is between Android Auto and the Jeep Cherokee interface, but the turn by turn directions are super quiet compared to the music with seemingly no way to adjust. Squarely on the Jeep UI side, I've been using the car for 4 days and still haven't figured out how to turn the radio off but keep the screen and turn by turn directions running.

While I haven't tried it, Osmand recently added support for Open Street Maps on Android Auto. I'm hopeful the experience is decent, but not willing to pay for it at the moment.

[whazor]

TomTom is actually developing their own distribution of Android Auto. Licenced and customized to manufacturers. The design concept looked very slick.

[scarface74]

What is a “distribution” of Android Auto? Isn’t it just a remote interface for your phone?

[grvdrm]

Is that true? Not saying you are wrong but is it just an anecdote? I anecdotally know lots of people that just use their car GPS and don’t bother with CarPlay/AA

[scarface74]

80% of new cars support CarPlay

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes...

As far as I know, most cars that support CarPlay also support Android auto. I can’t imagine car manufacturers wanting to pay licensing fees to TomTom unnecessarily.

[r-w]

Which makes you wonder if there must be some good reason why they’re still doing it.

[Nullabillity]

Anecdotally, people just use phone holders. I have never seen anyone use either the built-in GPS or CarPlay/AA.

[Bud]

False. People greatly prefer CarPlay if they are iPhone users, and already people are refusing to buy any car that doesn't support it.

Phone holders are over.

Even as early as 2017, the majority of car buyers already wanted CarPlay in a new vehicle and one-quarter of buyers said it was a "must have". That was five years ago. I'm sure the numbers are much higher now.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes....

Over 80% of new cars sold now support CarPlay. There's a reason for that: customers demanded it and walked out of dealerships if they didn't get it.

[Nullabillity]

Is that a US thing?

[GiorgioG]

I use my CarPlay for NAV all the time.

[perlgeek]

... and yet car makers still feel obliged to provide turn-based navigation out of the box.

[sdenton4]

But the car manufacturers have a lot more leverage for negotiating if they don't really need the software.

[prepend]

I like BMW’s nav idrive better than the CarPlay integration and use it instead of google/apple/wake.

First because it uses the whole screen and heads up display and CarPlay doesn’t. But this is probably something that could be done with better integration.

Second because CarPlay takes over the phone and I want nav to keep running while I use the phone for other things. I know that I shouldn’t, but at stop lights I’ll read texts, HN, etc. with an active nav, I have to switch away from it while I use the phone. With the car running the nav, I can use my phone for whatever I like.

All I use Apple Maps for is to send directions to my car.

It’s kind of nice to just have a dedicated nav in my car.

[scarface74]

“I don’t want to use CarPlay because if I do, I can’t be a distracted driver and do things that are illegal in many jurisdictions”

[airstrike]

You read HN at stop lights? How long are those stops???

[wjnc]

Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here?

I like the questions at the end of a company since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling as well. What does that do with companies? How do they communicate? What happens when the inevitable shrinking sets in and your brain drain is faster than the way you shrink? Should you ever actively terminate a company and tranfer IP / assets?

[ghshephard]

Small Nit - Netscape was broken up into pieces and sold to Sun Microsystems and AOL in 1999 for $10B. Thank Mike Homer for the great timing and resolve to get out while the getting was still good.

[DonHopkins]

Selling Netscape's server group to AOL was just sadistic punishment.

[mardifoufs]

For who? Genuinely curious, I didnt even know Netscape has a server division. Was it punishment for the team working there because it broke their potential, or was it that AOL got ripped of because Netscape server tech was horrible?

Late 1990s/early 2000s acquisitions just always sound so wild to me! Insanely wasteful, or just even bizarre. Tons of old/traditional corporations trying to merge/buy their way into completely unrelated markets, oe in this case cash rich new megacorps like AOL that had immense potential just squandering insane amounts of capital with almost 0 RoI. Crazy times!

[ghshephard]

The Netscape Server products were amazing. High performing LDAP multi-master systems years ahead of its time, a calendar and email product that we used at companies years after Netscape was no more.

It was tragic that so many amazingly talented engineers ended up resting and vesting at AOL for years - but, at least they all scattered to the winds a few years after that and went to see other companies.

[prepend]

And just more of AOL being really stupid. It seemed more like corporate charity.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling

Out of curiosity, why is the life insurance market dwindling??

[hellisothers]

Less people with dependents (partners, kids)? Less people care or put thought into what happens after they die? Also anecdotally many/most peers I talk to about this say their company provides life insurance, I then point out the difference between this and actual term life insurance for when/if they change companies: “oh huh…”

[fennecfoxen]

Don't forget that life insurance used to come in a different form, "whole" life insurance (instead of term life insurance) which doubles as a savings/investment vehicle. This has changed a lot: people have other alternatives that are popular (401(k)s are basically everywhere), and life insurance companies are no longer able to offer the same kind of terms, especially given the ultra-low-interest-rate environment of 2008 to present.

[TedDoesntTalk]

This sounds like pure speculation, which is fine, and I appreciate your comment, but would also like to hear from the poster who made the original comment since he works in that industry.

[wjnc]

Thanks Ted. In the Netherlands it’s a combination of a few market trends. 1. A trick insurers pulled in the 90s and consumers never forgave us for (lending money in the late 90s for leveraged stock investments with massive cost loading; still ongoing litigation). 2. Mortgage rules changing making a certain type of life insurance ineligible for interest deduction (you used to be able to pay 5% interest, get that interest as income tax deductible thus returning 50+% of that interest and still get 5% interest in your deposit!) and 3. the very low interest rates making products generally less interesting.

Most insurers here have closed their books, with only a few products open for sales. A few larger insurers and hedge funds are buying portfolios in order to hopefully gain benefits of scale. There’s basically two ways of making money: better investment returns usually via more risky investments and cost savings. Since many of these products stem from 70s-90s IT modernization and cost saving is a real activity.

[throwaway2037]

Most growth in insurance is coming from developing countries at this point. They still have rapid economic and population growth.

[lozenge]

Transfer to who? All the people who know how to put the assets to good use... are already employed by TomTom.

As long as the company provides value to shareholders and customers, why wind it down? Not everything had to be about growth, growth, growth.

[wjnc]

Let me be the first to say that hardcore capitalism isn't my usual purview. And that exactly the diversity of stakeholders is why I like this question.

TomTom obviously offers no value to shareholders (no dividend policy, history of losses, perhaps except those searching for volatily). It's 49% owned by the directors with a 51% float. It clearly offers some value to customers since it has revenues. However, the revenues have been falling for a decade and most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-house.

It has value to 4500 employees who retain gainful employment at TomTom! But the financial metric to measure value added for those employees is lacking: TomTom is worth nearly nothing. Society would be better of 'cancelling' TomTom and letting all employees go to companies with higher added value to society. They could be teachers, nurses and researchers at companies that further the technical boundary. Instead, they are working for no value at all except their salaries. It's sad. (: Hyperbole.)

[usrusr]

Plenty of people working for negative value except for their salaries and whatever wins they provide company owners in the negative sum games they engage in.

[sokoloff]

> most auto manufacturers seem able to procure these materials in-house

Most auto manufacturers go outside for nav/infotainment units from suppliers like Here, MVI, Telenav, etc.

I don’t see any impenetrable barrier that TomTom couldn’t try to compete in that market (or as a data supplier to that market).

[alFReD-NSH]

They are in that market actually with major manufactures like BMW.

[scotty79]

> Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here?

Because they are selling raw map data to Google, Bing and Apple (maybe?).

[alFReD-NSH]

As long as they have their B2B deals, they are gonna be around.

[colechristensen]

Free mapping existed before Google Maps.

Mapping isn't the hard part or the expensive part, the hardware is. Smartphones have GPS and when people started getting smartphones, the value of having a separate navigation devices went to zero-ish unless it's built in to your car or maybe some low power thing for wilderness exploration (or having a boat or a plane or that kind of thing)

[rickdeckard]

> Free mapping existed before Google Maps.

Not sure if free mapping really existed as an accessible (mobile) product, considering that nearly everyone had to buy the mapdata from dedicated companies (Navteq and TeleAtlas dominated the market, Navteq was later acquired by Nokia, TeleAtlas by TomTom)

In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along, completely disrupting the whole industry of "casual" Navigation solutions. Hardware wasn't even the issue, companies worked out profitable compact hardware solutions, introduced different tiers from Entry to Premium and in parallel TomTom (and Wayfinder et al) started to offer Navigation as a subscription service directly and as white-label via mobile carriers, with applications for J2ME, Windows PPC, Series60 (Nokia, Samsung,..), Symbian UIQ (Sony, Motorola). They had a robust offering, quality maps and plenty of added datasets like POI, speed-information, radar-warning,... (anyone remembers the celebrity voice packages?)

Then Google opened Navigation as public beta, grabbed a huge chunk of this market and later added offline maps to grab another chunk of it (for navigation in international roaming). The quality was far below any competitor, but it was free and for occasional use totally sufficient...

[faeriechangling]

> In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along

Map quest was around and popular. Google maps was better for many reasons but it really was an evolutionary product.

[prepend]

> Free mapping existed before Google Maps.

Search existed before Google as well. Free maps were very inferior to Google maps and also were a loss leader for other service that’s MapQuest was trying to sell into enterprise and stuff.

Google maps was just another ad stream for Google and so was much easier to link to, embed everywhere. And had an innovative UI.

Before Google cranked up their prices Google maps got embedded everywhere. This was novel and not something that Mapquest and other existing maps promoted.

[DonHopkins]

Yeah: Microsoft Maps on PocketPC. Pffffft!