With the explosion of the navigation market and the increasing need for better, more precise map data it's clear that what's on the inside may do more for product improvement than the "packaging" of a navigation device. We interviewed Jon Husby, director of Automotive Markets and in-vehicle applications at Tele Atlas to find out more about the brains behind the screen. -Ben Oh
Background on Tele Atlas
Tele Atlas (TA) was founded in the Netherlands in 1984, and came over around 2000 to the U.S. It acquired a company that produced the first nav system (with a monochrome screen). It had previously been owned by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, which saw what was happening in Japan and considered the potential of using it for advertising. A little ahead of his time - it was sold to Sony, then Tele Atlas.
Share of the Market
TA has a 47 percent market share overall, 32 percent of automotive market, which now includes BMW. It also supplies map data for OnStar. On the fleet side, TA has over 1 million vehicles on the road using their maps. On the portable side of the nav market the company is up over 100 percent in terms of revenue. It handles accounts like TomTom and Mio and has 60 percent of the portable market globally.
Compiling Data
TA uses thousands of sources for its data. It employs the traditional method, a driving methodology, wherein the company's vehicles drive the roads it documents, and balances that data with reliable sources for road information, such as city governments. Cities provide updates on roads and TA verifies that information. It also uses web crawling technology to find out about new neighborhoods. Once it has the data - a major advantage of TA is pinpoint addressing. Historically, locating destinations is done through an address range method, e.g. 1000-2000 in terms of a street address instead of a specific number. TA has over 43 million address points in North America - 140 million overall. How up-to-date the information is depends on what part of the nav market you're looking at. Data is always updated. Generally there are quarterly releases, plus incremental updates throughout the quarter. TA's compile and drive and update system is the reason for their high JD Power rating.
Map of the World
TA covers 64 countries. North America, Japan and Western Europe and is expanding into Eastern Europe and Russia. India is a growing market. Right now due to the small market size and lack of available sources for map data in places like Mexico and Latin America and heavy restrictions in Russia and China, for example, mapping of those regions will be in the future.
Tele Atlas Traffic Information
TA has partnered with Inrix and Clear Channel.
The Future of Mapping
There are increasingly more sources for digital elevation information. There's also a big push for 3-D capability. TA uses its mobile mapping vans, which have been used in Europe for years and are equipped with cameras. Software studies the landscape captured on video, collecting info on slopes. The information then can be used for 3-D. You can build out 3-D landmarks, city views, etc. We'll see more and more of this by 2009.
Reliable POIs
TA partners with Infousa for points of interest data. Around 2005 there were 1.7 million new businesses and 1.6 million went away, according to Infousa. This is part of the problem in creating a reliable POI database, but software solutions are robust enough to overcome this hurdle. However, some companies are reluctant to release information and that represents challenges to any map data company.