This reminds me that I’ve got a quick message for the world’s satellite navigation manufacturers like TomTom and NavMan: don’t rip your customers off.
You know how you’re fighting a losing battle with GPS-enabled mobile phones? And how you have maps of most of the world but won’t provide them to customers unless they pay a ludicrous fee – almost the price of the receiver again? Well, perhaps you need to think about that.
I would’ve bought a TomTom last year before our overseas trip if it would have been usable when driving through Europe. The maps exist and are in all the European TomToms – but if we’d bought one there, then we wouldn’t have been able to use it in Australia. So we didn’t buy one. See that, TomTom company? A lost sale. It wouldn’t have cost you any more to let your Australian customers download the European maps for free, as people who’d purchased one of your units – but instead, by being greedy, you got no sale at all.
First GPS manufacturer to realise this and release a decent model that doesn’t arbitrarily restrict which maps I can use depending on the territory in which I bought it – you will have a sale.
Jeremy,
They are screwed. GPS enabled phones with google maps etc are becoming more widely available. Already they are starting to give driving directions as well.
The other rip off is the ones built into the car. I have heard people being quoted upwards of $500 to get their in dash maps upgraded.
They should be rentable, for cheap, most of the time I know exactly where I’m going, I’m picking 95% of GPS owners are in the same boat as me.
I’ll stick with the Melways until they are perfect and very very cheap.
“A lost sale.”
makes you wonder why these so-called captains of industry are still paid so much, Who came up with the idea of not making maps available and therefore alienating potential customers? What a clown! seriously some of them don’t have a clue.
Have a look at http://www.openstreetmap.org . There is rapidly improving mapping data available there for free for the entire world, and can be downloaded to Garmin GPS devices relatively easily.
I suppose when you buy a car, you demand a free Melways… AND Sydways, Queways and ANY street directory omnibus of any and every state and country in the world too.
Because dammit, why should you buy a car if it doesn’t come with a free map omnibus to any country, anywhere, at any time you feel like it?
Garmin it is then.
Jagger, unlike with physical street directories, the other maps don’t cost them anything more to provide to all their customers. Each map is already there for locals in that country – the profiteering is unnecessary. And drives potential customers off.
After all, if I’m buying a GPS it’s because I want to be able to find where I am when I get lost. I don’t want to find that in certain locations the GPS no longer cares whether I’m lost or not.
Anyway, they can take your attitude if they like – they just won’t get a sale from me. Which would’ve been profit, as opposed to no profit.
Ummmm…..me thinks you got bumsteered. I bought my Tom Tom in the U.K. and then bought the Map of Australia before I came home. The map only cost £50. It works fine back here – although I do need to change the voice from the English lass to an Aussie one. And you can buy European maps for TomTom’s bought in Australia – as a fellow Aussie showed me whilst we were over there.
I do agree that the original cost of the product though should dictate considerably more support and not just blackmailing the user into signing up for expensive updates.
That said there are “cracks” available which gives you all sort of “information” that I would know nothing about – hello corporate and copywrite lawyers out there!!
I think it’s to do with licensing. They don’t create the maps, they buy them from other companies.
(Notice how often Google Maps changes the “map data provided by ___” line as you pan and scroll around the world?)
Giving all maps to all customers would be really expensive, which is why when you buy it in one area, the maps for that area are loaded in there.
That being said, I’m pretty sure you can load new map sets into TomToms.
Also, the GPS apps for the iphone are US $100 each. And they run on similarly-restrictive map data sets, so you have to buy the Australia set, and the US set, etc etc.
I know this is kind off the point of the thread, but given the whole point of thinking progressively, you should probably all chuck your vehicle gps thingees.
At this particular point in human history do we really need a machine to do our thinking for us.
Especially when it comes to where we are, how we got here, where we are going, and how we are gonna get there.
Just a thought I had to share.