Nokia purchased NAVTEQ / Nokia (NYSE: NOK) for $8.1 billion dollars in 2007 when Nokia's stock was trading upwards of $30+ dollars per share.  Now Nokia's stock is trading at less than $6 per share and sinking.  Nokia's market cap is approximately $20B with annual sales of $55B.  When Nokia purchased Navteq it had a market capitalization of $120B.  So this begs the question of how much is NAVTEQ worth to Nokia these days?  It appears that NAVTEQ will do €600 million in revenue ($1B in US dollars) in 2011 while still losing money.

With Nokia struggling to get traction in the smartphone space it makes sense that NAVTEQ could be a ripe buyout candidate from a company like Microsoft or Apple who desperately need a map platform.  NAVTEQ products embedded in just about every car that has a navigation system embedded in the car.  Overprice I must say but the car manufacturers are selling the software for thousands of dollars when Google Maps is free.   Google Maps on the other hand is free but ad support and works great for most smartphone users.  Google Maps is not as reliable as NAVTEQ for navigation but it gets the job done at a fraction of the cost.  

So many big US mapping companies ask me what I think is a really stupid question:  Is it illegal in the US to publish red light camera or speed camera locations?  The answer is emphatically NO! There is one reason why.  Free Speech which is the first amendment in the US Amendment in the constitution protects citizens and businesses from this fact. Would the US Federal or State Governments ever ask companies like Google, Navteq or TeleAtals to not publishing the location data?  I continually ask myself why I have been gathering this data for the last 10+ years yet US mapping companies are still afraid of publishing the information?

You have to ask yourself why these well educated people and businessmen are asking this question?  As I am told it is currently illegal in German to publish red light camera and speed camera locations and use a warning device while driving. Police officers reportedly have the right to take about your navigation device or smartphone if they see you using an application that warns you of these locations.  Sounds a bit strange does it?  I would suspect that these laws would give a company like BMW some hesitation if they were considering to use this data for their in car navigation experiences.

Well, it turns out that this conservative thinking of not wanting to publishing the information has trickled down to navigation, map and big car companies.  These companies don't want to be perceived as helping their drivers evade the law when in reality it actually helps them drive safer.  Why, because it is a known fact that other drivers tend to do erratic things when they see warning signs or cameras.  There are proven examples that people tend to slow down suddenly hitting the brakes.  So as a result more fender bender accidents are created.  

Pete Tenereillo, the founder of Trapster has apparently been acquired by Navteq / Nokia.  Navteq is a struggling  Chicago-based mapping company, that is a division of Nokia which is another struggling mobile phone maker who is quickly losing market share.  AutoBlog broke the news and said there were about five companies in the running and there was a bidding war for the company. The terms of the deal are not available. We are waiting to hear back from Nokia and Trapster.   

Pete is an engineer and a sports car enthusiast who founded the company to primarily help his fellow drivers slow down when police were near while driving through the roads of San Diego.  We met with Pete when shortly after he launched the application and only had a few hundred thousand users.  The company interest in working with us to verify our database of fixed red light camera and speed cameras locations.  We never licensed our database to Trapster but they suspiciously had most of the locations shortly thereafter.  It is not clear how they accumulated the locations in their database nor do we know how many they have. 

It has been wildly reported how many downloads they have for their application but no one ever seemed to know how many users they have on a regular basis to keep the data fresh.  The application has apparently received 9M downloads and is free.  Its very common for iPhone application to have many downloads but a non-existent user base.   However, Trapster likely has many hundreds of thousands of users who share data and its impressive how they have scaled this capability as a small company.  

Its not clear if Trapster ever generated any subscription or advertising revenue from it but we don't think so. Trapster raised an angel round of less that one million dollars a few years ago and is based in San Diego.  We are not sure if they ever raised any more money than $1M or a VC round.  However, we would like to congratulate them for raising the awareness about the application and accumulating so many users.  

As a disclaimer, we publish an open database of fixed red light camera and speed camera locations and don't do a lot to prevent companies and people from copying it.  However, we are the largest database and most accurate database of red light cameras do date and no other companies have accepted our challenge to do a database comparison.  We do have a number of companies who license our database and are ethical about paying us for data they use.  

Its great to see the company get acquired as there are several companies developing applications in Europe that are interesting in coming to the US.  Europe has 40,000+ photo enforced cameras and its a much larger and more mature business over there.  The US currently has only about 6,000 cameras but its growing at a rate of about 20% per year. 

Portable Navigation Device sales are apparently weak this holiday season according to the analysts. Are PND devices losing consumer interest faster than expected because of other GPS devices?  Retail strength appeared biased towards mobile phones, tablets, TVs and gaming.  iPhone and Android devices were strong and Blackberry and Nokia (Navteq) remained weak.   PND devices may be losing interest more quickly than analysts expected and the price cuts are deep expecting subscription sales to make up the difference. However, very few of them have any differentiated content strategy to sell the data.

Wedbush analysts were watching retail traffic at Best Buy where the auto/GPS section was relatively desolate looking and it took time and effort to locate store personnel.  Displacement from smartphones and in-dash navigation systems continue: Garmin nüvi 255WT and TomTom XL350TM both 4.3” devices priced at $99.99 (TomTom also includes life time maps update).  The lowest priced PNDs were the Garmin nüvi 205 3.5” for $79 and the TomTom Ease US 3.5” for $59, both at Walmart. Follow up checks showed Garmin’s priced just under $100 with competitive products priced at $79.99. At one big box retailer, we calculated allocated shelf space for PNDs as follows: TomTom 32%, Magellan 32%, Garmin 20%, Insignia 12%, and Mitac 4%. However, they saw some separate standalone displays for Garmin and to a lesser extent, TomTom. While they believe TomTom will once again garner share gains on Black Friday, and believe both Garmin and TomTom will suffer from a declining PND market. Wedbush notes that Garmin did receive additional shelf space in the Outdoor/Fitness section, though they also saw Polar making a bigger push into GPS watches with a more sleek design.  Here are the latest PNDs available on Amazon.com.

       

Here is some new technology that allows cellphones to be used as navigation devices in cars, putting more pressure on the makers of in-car satnav systems. German car industry group Consumer Electronics for Automotive (CE4A) unveiled a standard for the technology, which is being pushed by Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker.

The personal navigation device (PND) industry, led by TomTom and Garmin, has been hit badly by competition from Google Maps navigation-enabled smartphones. When the new "terminal mode" standard is included in cars -- likely starting next year -- it enables consumers to plug a wire to their smartphones in the car and without any additional setup issues to use navigation or other features of their phones directly from a screen built into the car.

Consumer adoption will however take time, industry players and analysts say. "Immediate impact of this is limited, but if you get a credible, good enough experience from the phone navigation in the car -- it removes the need to have any PND," said Tim Shepherd, analyst with research firm Canalys. Navteq, the world's largest digital mapping firm, said it was seeing interest in the new technology across the industry. "We have seen a lot of interest in terminal mode from system vendors and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers)," Navteq's Chief Executive Larry Kaplan told Reuters in a recent interview.

 NAVTEQ would rather drive test and send expensive bodies out to verify. Example given: What if you looked at a map and it had a hotel listed 3 times. They dont get it and fear changing their old school ways. This cost structure is inneficiant as filters like PhotoEnforced.com get better for curating data. Nokia is the largest consumer based phone company yet the company has no intension of leveraging this footprint to capture data. Wow, this is a major management oversight and may soon be the demise of a Nokia and Navteq divorce. There just isnt any synergy or cross platform collaboration.

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NAVTEQ wants to become a media company but has no intentions of selling directly to consumers. I scratch my head hearing the contradiction? I was at the Navteq Connections Conference today and heard some contradictions in strategy and customer focus. As long as they continue to have a developer centric approach they will continue to fall behind.  Developers need a platform that has wide adoption like Android.  I am not sure that just a platform encourages developers to use it without some unique content.

Google Maps realizes its about unique content and Navteq is far from a media company.  Media companies are all about unique content creation similar to what it had Traffic.com.   However, it seems to want to morph this organization into an ad network. What's missing to become a media company? Content and eyeball creation.  Navteq needs to take a more aggressive stance in the online publishing world if they truly want to become a media company.  They should be buying companies like PhotoEnforced.com and GasBuddy.com and provide proprietary content for its customers. Navteq seems content trying to court the large automotive car companies like Ford who are 5 years behind in the content business from smart phones.

NAVTEQ, the global provider of maps, traffic and location data enabling navigation, location-based services and mobile advertising around the world, has released results of a new survey that shows 78% of consumers welcome ads on their connected mobile devices when those ads are intelligent enough to know where the end user is and can go on to guide them to nearby retailers and offers, and when the ads offset the cost of other high-value content.  This announcement also supports the business case of rival Google Places which might soon be providing free wireless location based advertising applications and services.

Conducted by Marketing Research Services Inc. (MRSI), the survey showed that 78% of consumers are receptive to receiving location-intelligent LocationPoint ads to offset the cost of value-based content such as NAVTEQ Traffic, a six percent increase over the results of MRSI's first round of research on the subject published in November 2009. The new round of research yielded strong indications that again underscore the power of LocationPoint in converting passers-by to paying customers. Other findings show:

• At least 42% of respondents that were exposed to a brand recalled seeing that brand (aided and unaided)
• Thirty-one percent of respondents who reported seeing an ad on their device clicked on that ad for information to nearby locations
• In a significant measure of impact, up to 31% of consumers seeing a specific ad went on to visit a store location; of those respondents who visited a location after seeing an ad, 53% said they did so directly because of the ad
• Nine percent of respondents who visited a location because of seeing an ad reported it was a first-time visit to that location
• Most desired ads were considered attractions/points of interest that provided a special offer or coupon, e.g. gas/fuel and restaurant offers

The MRSI-commissioned research surveyed 782 respondents 18 and older experienced with using ad-enabled personal navigation devices.

Launched 18 months ago, LocationPoint harnesses NAVTEQ's unrivalled location content and capabilities to pinpoint where consumers are, deliver ads and calls to action within a certain distance of advertised points of purchase, and guide them to the doorstep of an advertised retailer. Built-in calls to action including "click to map" and "click to navigate" bolster consumer engagement with ads, drive traffic to advertised locations and make the service unique.

"The survey indicates consumers are receptive and responsive to ads when those ads are contextually relevant. It shows strong, stable consumer acceptance of LocationPoint -- and even suggests consumer acceptance grows with continued exposure," said Christopher Rothey, vice president, advertising, NAVTEQ. "LocationPoint's unique location intelligence is what drives that level of acceptance and make the ads measurably impactful."

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We Want Real Time Traffic + Photo Enforced Locations 

Traffic has been a hot topic lately with people debating which traffic providers.  Real time traffic data services are destined to be one of the biggest advances in GPS systems for the consumer. While GPS devices strive to provide the fastest route from point A to B, they generally do so by considering the most optimistic road conditions. This route should be the quickest assuming there are no traffic delays.  Live traffic reporting services aim to change that. But which traffic services are the best in the U.S. and what type of data is available, and how well does it work?

When a debate comes up over which traffic data provider is “better” the discussion almost always ends up  at which map has more colored roads. Their seems to be a pressure to paint more colors on more roads which is appealing to the traffic providers as it makes them look like they have more coverage in more places. To some extent that is true but if I am driving and traffic is flowing nicely.  I suppose I don't have to use the navigation or application on my phone and I can turn it off.  What if the traffic data providers starting thinking out of the box and provide other point of interest data to drivers like red light camera and speed camera information.  You might be even more motivated to constantly use a traffic app at all times even when traffic is ok.  Also, I really only care about where I am now and what else might be around me like red light cameras or speed cameras if traffic is flowing.

Sensors & Fleet Data
Traffic data suppliers, like traffic.com (owned by Navteq), INRIX (independent), TrafficCast.com collect data from road sensors, local departments of transportation, data collected from operators of large fleets of vehicles, and other manual sources such as traffic helicopters and listening to police scanners.  Traffic.com is rumored to be making a concerted effort to monetize its traffic applications through advertising as it is no longer independent and owned my a mobile phone company Navteq / Nokia. INRIX remains commercially focused on OEM car manufacturers and is rumored to be an IPO candidate in 2010.

Cell Phone Data
Other traffic data suppliers like Airsage (independent) collect information to by tracking congestion on roadways via your cellphone. This data is tracked "anonymously" through partnerships with companies like Verizon. Some criticize this method as being inaccurate especially in areas where there are lots of pedestrians on the street walking.  Google happens to be the largest customer of Airsage at the present time.

Visual and Voice Data
Some companies like Westwood One & Clear Channel use other drivers, helicopters and visual traffic cameras to broadcast on the radio to their listeners about problem areas around the city.  This method is very labor intensive and requires lots of people.  However, these methods are usually funded by advertising sales teams who sell radio air time.

The Garmin Nüvi for navigation must be a holiday retail success story because we are getting lots of emails from customers asking for our red light camera database. We do not currently license the database directly to consumers because we do not have the infrastructure necessary to deal with customer service.  We prefer to license our database to vendors like Garmin who can add our database as a feature.  After my brief review it appears based on the product that traffic is an additional service option that can be added on as well as a number of Points of Interest as seen below.  There are many other points of interest like banks, restaurants, shopping, parking, gas, entertainment but nothing to help you driver more safely.  Safe driving is a hot topic this year and we have a database that can help Garmin  customers.

We met with Garmin management and they seemed content sourcing red light camera data from an unamed company in Europe that provides no sources for its database.  As long as Garmin's executive seem is satisfied with being behind the curve and not having a complete dataset that is what their customers will get.  Please retweet and post a comment this post if you would like to see our red light content added to the Garmin platform. I don't think management is going to change their data provider unless consumers protest.

See related story:
TomTom Red Light Camera Database is Crap

We are also pleased to announce that we have executed an agreement with a major manufacturer of mobile phones and mobile navigation products to include the AURA (TM) database in their North American and European navigation products that will be released early next year." said Jim Bazet, Cobra's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

"This is a significant step in our plan to make AURA the preeminent provider of photo-enforcement alerts globally and is expected to contribute to revenues and earnings in the second half of 2010. Moreover, PPL generated an increase in sales due to the strength of their new product introductions - mobile navigation products tailored to the needs of the professional driver and the recreational vehicle owner. Cobra has recently launched in the U.S. a mobile navigation product for the professional driver that utilizes this successful PPL platform. We are aggressively pursuing new opportunities and expect a substantial improvement in fourth quarter results."

Cobra Electronics (Ticker: COBR) Reports Third Quarter Results | Reuters: 

How much due diligence did the "licensee" (Navteq owned by Nokia Ticker: NOK) do on where Cobra acquired the AURA database information and how they plan to keep the information fresh?

See related articles:

10 Questions about NAVTEQ's Speed and Red Light Camera Database
Red Light & Speed Cameras POI Database

Google announces turn-by-turn GPS navigation today for the Android. It’s currently in beta testing, and will be available for FREE on phones using Google’s Android 2.0 operating system. The GPS navigation includes a tons of unique features (many of these are part of the features you’d see planning a route using Google Maps through a regular web browser).

Google just forced the traditional GPS navigation companies to rethink their business models releasing what may be a far superior product for free. It is not a standalone navigation app. Rather it taps into a lot of the resources Google makes available on the Web, including Google Maps, Streetview, voice recognition, and sophisticated search. Google is happy to give its navigation app away for free because it leverages many existing technologies it has already built for the Web, and it encourages more people to use Web-capable phones and do local searches on them. Its strategy is to give the software away for free, and make money on the search ads.

GPS navigation apps are among the most expensive, and most lucrative, of all mobile apps. However, these paid navigation apps (Navigon, TomTom, CoPilot, MapQuest, GoKivo and Sygic Mobile) are at an immediate disadvantage.  Maybe the race will become which company starts licensing the most useful third party data to differentiate themselves?  The big question is when does Google Maps start incorporating points of interest features from users?  PhotoEnforced.com is an example of a map data source where the advertising business model is completely aligned with Google Maps.

Google could very well make it available to other phones as well, and that is what has investors worried. The new Google Maps Navigation app will be included on Motorola's upcoming Android phone, the Motorola Droid, and will provide turn-by-turn directions based on up-to-date maps and business listings from Google Maps. The Google Maps Navigation software will also be made available to other Android devices running the newly unveiled Android 2.0 software.

Shares in GPS manufacturers Garmin and TomTom fell today following the annoucement from Google that upcoming Android handsets will include free navigation software.  Following the announcement shares of Garmin fell 17.2% to $31.88 and TomTom shares fell more than 20% to €8.11.

PhotoEnforced.com would like to help Google Street View and contribute our database of fixed red light camera locations for the U.S. We have built the database organically over the last 8 years since 2001 and think the Google Map users would like to have access to the data. I was originally hoping to verify locations contributed to our open database on Google Street View. It then became apparent that some of the Street View images are not up-to-date. For example, I did a Google Street View search for Rosecrans Ave & Hindry Ave., Hawthorne, CA 90250 and was unable to locate the red light camera that is currently installed. I drew an image of where the camera location should be located above.

PhotoEnforced.com/US already has thousands of red light cameras already published on a Google map for view and it would be great to get this data syndicated onto Google Maps so I could use the data on my Google Android phone on T-Mobile.


in reference to: 90254 - Google Maps (view on Google Sidewiki)

We would like to alleviate some of the confusion in the marketplace. Navteq is NOT currently a customer of PhotoEnforced.com and we have no idea where they have acquired their data from.

However, PhotoEnforced.com has been the #1 sole source and pioneer of gathering red light camera and speed locations in a free open database since 2001. There are many databases in the market described above who copy our data and use this data and sell it. If you are considering licensing or using the NAVTEQ speed and red light camera locations database you might want to ask them the following questions first . . .

1) Why are you missing about a 1000+ locations?
2) What sources for acquiring the original 5000 locations?
3) Are your sources for the data stealing content?
4) Sources for updates on new locations and changes?
5) Proprietary research (?) when PhotoEnforced.com is free?
6) Any right turn and red light camera / speed combo cameras?
7) Why did it take you so many years to release a product?
8) Can you deliver updates to the locations in real time?
9) How do you charge for the database?
10) Publishing fines with the location be a copyright violation?

NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of digital map, traffic and location data for in-vehicle, portable, wireless and enterprise solutions, announced today at Telematics Detroit 2009 speed and red light camera locations are now available for the NAVTEQ(R) map of North America. NAVTEQ Camera Alert(TM) includes up-to-date information about the exact location of speed limit cameras, red light cameras, as well as combined speed and red light cameras in 5,000 locations throughout North America.

"Automated cameras are proliferating across North American cities," stated Cindy Paulauskas, vice president Americas map and content products, NAVTEQ. "And our proprietary research indicates that these types of warnings are a highly valued feature in countries where this navigation system functionality is available. Providing our customers with quality North America camera location information helps enable solutions that give drivers better knowledge of maximum speeds and traffic signals - with alerts at the right place and at the right time."

See related posts:
Cobra Electronics Licensing Data to Navteq?
Red Light & Speed Cameras POI Database

I think our photo enforced data could be a killer application if syndicated on Google Maps. However, my emails are never answered and still sense there is a lot of "NIH" at Google. Data transparency of photo enforced locations is a big problem and is primarily a local issue in the U.S. A complete and accurate data set of these locations will always be hard to find as long as local U.S. governments lack the transparency necessary to track all of the thousands of locations. Google could play a big role in management and tracking of these locations if they simply decided to get behind our vision and help us syndicate the data. It has taken me eight years to build the database of locations and will not stand for the all of the mapping giants copying our data!

PhotoEnforced.com has launched new regional maps of Red Light Camera locations for Washington DC, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County and Riverside. More regions will be launching soon.