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.
this is getting ugly
How much damn money do these companies have? If I had Billions of dollars to spend I'd just retire.
Let's see, both could use the maps and make their money off selling competing electronics. Or one could, in effect, attempt to lock the other out of the market. The real question is "How much will the loser of this bidding war spend to create their own mapping company. Three and a half billion is some serious change." Lawyers and antitrust suits could also mess this strategy up.
This is definately an anti-trust candidate. How the people who inforce those laws could allow all of this is a mystery to me. If there were numerous map makers, this would not matter, but since it can potentially put several companies out of business and create a duopoly of gps device makers destroys the competitiveness of the market and puts us at a disadvantage as consumers.
Since you are a big fan of Garmin and Navtec and have consistently trashed TomTom for using Tele Atlas maps.
I guess if Garmin wins the bidding war, Magellan will be the best!
There seems to be a morale in there some where.