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November 7, 2007

The Battle For Tele Atlas: Round 2
garmin_to_buy_tele_atlas.jpg

Things are getting ugly in the battle for mapping provider Tele Atlas. After Garmin tried to outbid TomTom to acquire Tele Atlas, it appears that TomTom struck back with an even higher offer.

Garmin offered $3.3 billion for Tele Atlas, overridding TomTom's first bid of $2.7 billion. Not to be outdone, TomTom took a strike back by offering up $3.57 billion to acquire the rights to Tele Atlas.

TomTom co-founder and Chief Executive Harold Goddijn said buying Tele Atlas will allow the company to integrate new innovations from TomTom devices with Tele Atlas's maps. TomTom has developed a new traffic detection service that can warn drivers of road congestion using data based on mobile phone signals. That service would be better sold by matching it with Tele Atlas's maps, he said.

A spokesman for Garmin said the company is reviewing its options and had no further comment.

It appears that TomTom seriously doesn't want Garmin to own the other half of the pie since Nokia already bought out NAVTEQ.

All of these aquistions are proof that the GPS marketing is heating up. Were going to be following this one closes, because it mostly certainly going to effect all of us GPS users.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Posted by Michael on November 7, 2007 | Comments (5)