Slashgeo

The Map Room and All Points Blog links to a Wired article on TeleAtlas and NAVTEQ data collection strategies. From the article: "Next, GDT acquired detailed aerial photography of major cities. "We could look at a street and see which way cars were parked, even tire rubber going into intersections, and deduce 85 percent of the turn restrictions and one-way attributes," Cooke says. Some state transportation departments offered video footage of their streets to GDT, and Cooke's employees would fast-forward through hours of tape, noting every road sign. Impressed by how much faster and cheaper maps could be updated with this approach, Tele Atlas, a Belgium-based company, bought GDT for $100 million in 2004." On this previous story, we learned Tele Atlas wants to benefit from customer feedback to improve maps.

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."

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.

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.

A few geoblogs highlighted Garmin's withdrawal from the Tele Atlas acquisition bid and the long term agreement between Garmin and NAVTEQ (owned by Nokia). The Map Room links to a short Engaget story and APB to an article on the withdrawal. All Points Blog provides a few additional links on the settlement of Garmin with TomTom regarding intellectual property cases. The agreement's introduction: "NAVTEQ (NYSE: NVT), a leading global provider of digital maps for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions and Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN), today announced the completion of a long-term agreement that provides Garmin access to NAVTEQ map data through 2015 with an option to continue through 2019." See also related stories below.

All 72 countries of NAVTEQ's map database will now be available to Yahoo! according to an announcement made by NAVTEQ on GisUser.com this morning. Among the back and forth of "we love you" and "no, we love you more" quotes in the announcement is this from Jeremy Kreitler, director of product management, Yahoo! Maps,

"As we continue to expand the range of sites that integrate Yahoo! Maps, particularly in the mobile and international areas, NAVTEQ's single global specification makes integration simple and allows us to put more of our focus on building great products."

An Anonymous Voxel writes "Chicago Tribune has a writeup on some emerging problems in Navteq's aquisition by Nokia: "European antitrust regulators have raised concerns over the acquisition of Chicago-based digital map provider Navteq by Finnish cell phone-maker Nokia, delaying an $8.1 billion deal that is poised to marry the world's largest digital navigator and handset manufacturer. [...] European Commission said it "has opened a detailed investigation" into the deal after a preliminary review prompted "serious doubts" over how competition in the region would be affected. The antitrust body has until Aug. 8 to make a decision on the matter."" Related stories copied below.

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...