The incredible growth of satellite navigation use shows little sign of slacking off, with consumers coming back to buy their second-, third- or even fourth-generation device. An indication of the heat in the market for location-based products is the recent $1.8bn (£1.25bn) offer from TomTom for TeleAtlas, one of the duopoly of companies that provide the base maps needed by GPS software. Phone giant Nokia has now promptly decided to buy TeleAtlas’s larger rival Navteq for $5.4bn (£3.8bn).
It’s not difficult to see why these companies are so bullish about the market. It’s reckoned that there are still about 30 million cars without sat nav in the UK. And business use is booming as well - it’s rare to see a van driver, cabbie or sales executive without a sat nav device in their vehicle, and GPS receivers are now popping up everywhere: in mobile phones, PDAs, smartphones and even jogging watches.
Most people still see these devices as just an easy way for poor map readers to get from A to B, not realising that thanks to a thriving geek community, there are lots of cheap tools out there that can help you make the most of your investment.
One example is the proliferation of low-cost, user-generated databases of speed camera locations, which you can download for pretty well every popular make and model from sites such as PocketGPSWorld. Another useful one - for those businesses involved with haulage at least - is the £18.99 low bridge database at www.tomtompoi.net. These are examples of databases of so-called “points of interest” or POIs, which are often stored in simple text files.
But a much more generally useful and free service for creating and generating your own POI files is the innovative POI Editor. This is a Web 2.0-style “mashup” using Google Maps that allows you to interactively create and edit custom POI files for almost any device.
You only need a bit of imagination, and some patience, and you can create a custom POI database of, say, all your customer sites, which you can then distribute to all the drivers in your firm. To use it, it’s as simple as finding the location on the map (or entering the postcode), then clicking Save Point.
And of course I haven’t even touched on the possibilities of tools like TomTom’s free Buddies system, which lets you find where your colleagues are and navigate directly to them. The upshot is that before signing up for expensive telematics or tracking solutions, you shouldn’t dismiss consumer sat nav units as useful business tools. With a little thought and effort, you might be surprised to find out what you can get them to do for you.
