Was invited to the Tele Atlas event today (27th Oct 09) at Red Dot Museum. It was a no fuss event. Got the chance to catch up with fellow bloggers. Anyway, the event is about Tele Altas maps. As you may already know, Tele Altas maps have been used by many GPS map vendors (Tom Tom, Garmin and etc). And if you are interested, recently, HTC included Sygic maps into some Android models. The event today includes many of their partners to showcase the latest GPS Maps software that is using Tele Altas maps (ie. HTC, Garmin, NDrive and etc).
The event started with Dionne, Marketing Manager APAC, from Tele Atlas talking about Tele Atlas mapping the World with their Mapping Vehicles. She also mentioned that Singapore is already 100% map by Tele Altas.
I remembered last year at CommunicAsia, I asked Tele Atlas about their Mapping Van, they mentioned that the project to map Singapore is still ongoing. This picture below was taken last year.
Anyway, she went on to mention about the various partners that Tele Atlas is working with. I am sure that you will be able to identify most of them.
And we were given an overview of how mapping is done in a country like Singapore
Next, she touched on how Tele Atlas adapted to the unique nature of every country when providing mapping solutions. Example like our ERP system and obsession with Carparks in Singapore or Taiwan’s obsession with location of Karaoke.
She explained that as mapping progresses, more information are added. Example like Traffic condition and consumer’s speed profile.
Next, she talked about Location Based Service (LBS). Personally, I feel that this will be an important feature in any application for the future.
We were given a timeline of how map information from our phone has progressed from a simple SMS information to the current content-rich maps.
And we were shown a market survey of how people are using LBS services.
Finally, of course, she talked about how Tele Atlas provide maps to partners with their innovations. With this, she concluded her part of the presentation.
Next up, JOÃO PEDRO LEITE, Business Development Director of NDrive Navigation Systems.
NDrive is quite a new company.
However, I was quite amazed by their GPS navigation software. João talked about the trend of various GPS navigation map solution. And he mentioned that there is an increased trend in mobile phone map solution as shown in the graph below.
He introduced NDrive GPS Navigation Map solution which I think it totally different from others. Here are the differences in NDrive solution as compared to conventional solutions.
Notice that it uses 3D aerial photo integration (this is not Google Map) and also, it includes Pedestrian and Adventure modes. Finally, here are the languages and maps that NDrive supports.
His presentation ended with some Q&A. One question posted was whether Tele Atlas’s Sygic or NDrive monitor or validate community input.
Tele Atlas mentioned that they have a team to validate the input and will response faster if there are many community input on one similar issue/information. However, NDrive will not validate these community inputs.
The event ended with some snacks for us. BTW, we were given a goodie bag. Inside this goodie bag, we have the usual media release, a Windows Mobile pouch and on top of it, we have a free 12 month usage of Sygic for Windows Mobile or Android in microSD card format.
If you like to know more about Sygic map, I have uploaded a video presentation (in our Media Kit).
Click Here to Tele Atlas Website
Or if you would like to know more about NDrive Maps, here is the video below.
Click Here to NDrive Website
Hope that you enjoy the event coverage 🙂
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