profile  
     
  driving navigation  
             
 
The basics: TomTom is the world’s largest navigation solution provider. We develop products and services with an emphasis on innovation, quality, ease-of-use and value. Independent academic research has also proven that TomTom products have a significant positive effect on driving performance and road safety.

Founded in Amsterdam in 1991, we now have offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, and our products are sold in 30 countries across the globe. TomTom is listed on Euronext Amsterdam in The Netherlands.
Navigation and TomTom - how it all began: Some 25 years ago, the first entrepreneurs began digitising the European road network, hoping that a substantial percentage of new cars would soon be equipped with navigation equipment. It didn’t take off as anticipated because consumers felt navigation equipment was expensive, difficult to operate and inefficient.

At TomTom, we had been watching this market space closely for some years and realised that what was needed was a company that could talk directly to the end-user. Our problem at the time was that the cost of memory was too expensive to make an attractive product at the right price. However, around the turn of the century that changed, when demand for high-density, low-cost memory exploded with the proliferation of digital cameras and music systems.

At the end of 2001, we looked very hard at this market space once more and decided to pursue the opportunity. In that first year, TomTom had just a modest €2 million revenue.

Spring 2002 saw the launch of TomTom’s first GPS-linked car navigation product for PDAs. Reactions were positive and we then started to design a complete solution that worked out-of-the-box, with hardware and software that was easy-to-use, fun and affordable. With the many generations of product that followed, we have stuck with the same formula and this forms a key element of TomTom’s renowned customer loyalty and brand strength.
how we do business: At TomTom, we focus on core activities – such as software development, hardware design and branding – and we outsource other non-core activities.

TomTom products are sold online and through a network of leading retailers in 30 countries on 5 continents. We provide our retail partners with high quality point-of-sale materials so that they can leverage maximum benefit from the strength of the TomTom brand, as well as the excellent technical support to their sales staff that is so vital in an industry such as ours.

We work hard to develop and foster strong working relations with our business partners – retail, distribution and manufacturing – all of whom play a crucial role in the TomTom success story.