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TomTom and Garmin in Tele Atlas Bidding War

posted by gywright on Wednesday October 31, @10:51AM   Printer-friendly   Email story  Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the who-else-wants-to-bid? dept.
Business Location-Based Services Maps The Industry
It looks like the TomTom buyout of Tele Atlas isn't a done deal. Bloomberg is reporting Garmin will make an offer for Tele Atlas just before TomTom's offer expires. From the article,

"A bidding war has started," said Jesper Kruger, who helps manage about $64 billion at ATP in Copenhagen. "TomTom needs this asset, so they will have to increase their offer by at least 20 percent."

Watching competitors TomTom and Garmin fight this out will be interesting. It could get even more interesting if others jump into to this bidding war as well. Navteq and Tele Atlas were really the only viable world players for that kind of data and with Navteq getting bought by Nokia, TeleAtlas is a unique opportunity. Update: 10/31 17:17 GMT by S : Here's the associated press release from Garmin.

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Technology: Garmin GPS Devices and Competition [+]
All Points Blog links to an AP article which analyse Garmin GPS devices and their competition worlwide. From the article: "Research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that the number of GPS devices sold worldwide — including personal navigation units and applications built into cell phones and hand-held computers — will grow from 18 million last year to 88 million in 2010. [...] Looking ahead, Garmin officials see the next big challenge isn’t new competitors but breaking more into the European market, where it has a little more than 10 percent share."
Industry: TomTom Buys TeleAtlas 2 comments [+]
ixcer writes "A joint press release announces that TomTom, the world’s largest navigation solution provider, will acquire Tele Atlas, the biggest data provider for navigation systems, including Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Nokia. The announcement starts this way... "TomTom N.V. (“TomTom”) and Tele Atlas N.V. (“Tele Atlas” or the “Company”), jointly announce that the expectation is justified that an agreement can be reached in connection with a public offer by TomTom for all outstanding shares of Tele Atlas at an offer price of € 21.25 in cash, (the “Offer Price”) per ordinary share (the “Offer”).

The Supervisory Board and the Management Board of Tele Atlas (the “Boards”), after having duly considered the strategic, financial and social aspects of the proposed transaction, support the intended Offer and conclude that the Offer is in the best interests of the shareholders and all other stakeholders of Tele Atlas. The Boards of Tele Atlas will, when the Offer is made by TomTom, recommend acceptance of the Offer by the shareholders of Tele Atlas."" Update: 07/23 17:41 GMT by S : All Points Blogs provides more links such as the Reuters article.
Industry: More on Nokia's Acquisition of NAVTEQ 3 comments [+]
As expected, the Nokia acquisition of NAVTEQ made ink flow. I'm to blame for not having linked to the official press release in my previous coverage. Amongst the reactions, here's Vector One short analysis, GeoCarta discuss how this acquisition could mean trouble for Garmin, and then there's All Points Blog extensive coverage: links to many media reactions, link to why Nokia should now buy Skype, link to why Google never considered buying NAVTEQ themselves and the impact on the price paid by TomTom for TeleAtlas.
Industry: NAVTEQ vs TeleAtlas 2 comments [+]
The Map Room links to a GPS Review article about a comparison of NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas, the two main rivals in road databases. The article's conclusion: "So would I now recommend Tele Atlas maps over NAVTEQ in the USA? Not necessarily. I’m keeping my prior position that the map vendor isn’t currently something that should be a big consideration when looking to purchase a GPS device in the USA. If these results are representative of the entire database the difference between them would only amount to finding less than a dozen more addresses in a year, navigating to a new address every day."
Industry: TeleAtlas / TomTom Deal Okay'd [+]
The news is spreading fast. The TomTom/TeleAtlas deal is moving ahead. Reuters is reporting that "TomTom, the world's biggest maker of car navigation devices, won unconditional permission from the European Commission on Wednesday to buy its main map supplier, Tele Atlas, for 2.9 billion euros ($4.5 billion)." EUBusiness reports the EU scrutiny determined that "the deal would not significantly reduce competition in the SatNav sector".
The next obvious question is how this impacts the NAVTEQ/Nokia deal...
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