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back to article TomTom axes 10% of workforce

Sat-nav maker TomTom is axing 10 per cent of the workforce and reorganising the R&D budget to speed up the time it takes to get products to market. The move is part of a restructuring programme designed to slash costs by some €50m and counter a 23 per cent slowdown in consumer sales reported in Q3. "We will reduce the number …

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  1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

    Good Riddance

    Hope they sacked the idiots who developed the SW for the Go740 series.

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    1. lIsRT
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      oh well

      I actually liked using their car navigation kits; I would have bought one by now, if it was possible to load new maps onto the thing without having to run Windows or OSX.

      Looks like the company might be circling the porcelain at the moment, so I doubt it's worth choosing one of theirs no matter what they do...

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      1. Headley_Grange Silver badge
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        When they work they are great

        Much better than a smart phone. Problem is that mine only works well about 10% of the time - and I don't think it's unusual. The rest of the time it can't find the network for traffic, it can't find where it is, it resets itself at random, the speed camera alerts turn themselves off, map updates delete saved settings, etc etc etc.

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  2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Foresight

    Perhaps somebody in R&D might have forseen smart phones - or even back-seen smart phones after they were launched.

    I think the market for portable fax machines might also see major restructuring soon

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    1. miknik
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      They did

      I had Tomtom on my Nokia N95 way back when. Pretty sure you can buy it on the iPhone now.

      I think Tomtom's problems two fold: car munfacturers fitting sat nav as standard and companies like Google giving away free sat nav functionality on their devices.

      Tomtom are fighting a losing battle. They will go the way of all the big car alarm manufacturers of the 90s, selling a product which no-one needs any more. It will all end up with them hitting navigate to and selecting PricewaterhouseCoopers as the final destination.

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      1. Law
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        Unhappy

        They're sticking TomTom in Renault cars atm

        but it's a half-arsed attempted at integration. For some reason I could only control my unit via a remote, and that was recently stole. So I have a choice, replace the remote for £65 through the normal channels... buy one that was probably stolen anyway on ebay (maybe my own back) - or just use my android phone and think of the satnav as pretty but useless wallpaper in my car.

        I just use my phone one.

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    2. Dr Trevor Marshall
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      FAIL

      TomTom => Dodo

      TomTom saw 'piracy' on the WinCE IPAQ smartphone version it released some years ago. 'Once bitten, twice shy' was the wrong metaphor to apply, however. Refusing to put TomTom on Android has made me switch to other vendors, including Google. Google is not as good at routing as TomTom, but gives you the info you need to get from point A to point B (the distance to the next turn being paramount, IMO). It may be too late for Tomtom to react to the changing market. I would have bought TomTom for Android at $100 a year ago, not so sure I would now... I used Google Navigator on a recent trip to Australia and Singapore without any problems... And TomTom doesn't even allow you easy access to foreign maps (oh - did anybody tell TomTom's MBA's that travel patterns have changed in the last decade?)

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    3. jonathanb Silver badge
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      Well yes, they do have a satnav app for Windows Mobile (the old version) and iPhone, though nothing for the new Windows Phone or Android. I got Tom Tom for my Windows Mobile many years ago. Now that I've switched to Android, I mostly use the free Google Navigation app, though I do have Co-Pilot which I use some times. The advantages of Co-Pilot are the revenue camera database, and the fact that it works off-line so works if I start my journey in an area with no signal, or if I don't want to incur data roaming charges.

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    4. Headley_Grange Silver badge
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      Perhaps if they listened to users, fixed bugs, made improvements to HMI and employed help-desk staff didn't say "you need to re-format the hard disk" to every problem then they might not have to sack people. My TomTom is a perfect and fantastic piece of kit for the 10% of it's operational life when it works properly. The rest of the time its a piece of s*hite.

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    5. Giles Jones Gold badge
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      I was running Tomtom on my PDA in 2003. A few years later I was running it on a Windows Mobile phone.

      Tomtom moved into hardware as their software was being copied. Also smartphones weren't all that popular until the iPhone and Android appeared.

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  3. dognolegs

    Greed

    Watch those MBAs skedaddle, as they try to save their bonuses by firing as many actual workers as possible...

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  4. TonyHoyle

    Maybe restucture their customer service

    As it's currently a customer losing service. I'll *never* buy a tomtom device again after dealing with them (I'm not sure they actually have any CS *people* as every single reply appeared to be from a bot - normally requesting information I'd sent them 2 emails previously).

    OTOH now we have smartphones, they're irrelevant anyway.. who wants to carry around an inconvenient single-use box when the phone in your pocket does the same job?

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    1. Headley_Grange Silver badge
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      You need to re-format your hard disk.

      Now, what's the problem?

      I swear that if I told them that the windscreen sucker no longer stuck they'd tell me to reformat the hard disk and install the latest software.

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  5. Johan Bastiaansen
    FAIL

    like Microsoft

    In the early days of personal navigation, they had a virtual monopoly and they acted like Microsoft. There was no upgrade path and I was forced to buy 3 full licences for different smartphones over the years. They're website was crap and buggy. My serial number was never recognised and I was never able to download the few free upgrades I was entitled too.

    And then there were alternatives. And a lot of early clients ran. Who would have thought?

    It's always the same with these university educated manager types: they're shortsighted morons who think the sun shines out of their arse.

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  6. Morrie Wyatt
    FAIL

    And I'm still waiting on a linux equivalent to their TomTom Home software!

    You can't buy online map updates without it, but the damn thing only runs under Microsoft Windows.

    Online support staff keep telling me that they have passed it to to the second level support and marketing teams, but invariable that is the last you hear of it. Now they are firing exactly the people that are needed to create such software. Figures!

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  7. RichyS

    Great timing. Merry fucking Christmas.

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  8. pompurin

    Has anyone else used NavFree? I downloaded it for Android a few months back and it's impressive. You have to download a large map and postcode database initially, but after that you don't require any data connection and can route anywhere solely with a GPS signal. It is based upon the data taken from OpenStreetMap and is free.

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  9. Ascylto
    Big Brother

    Fatties

    Profits up 50%.

    Sack 10% of workers.

    Says it all, really.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I have a TomTom and it's the best solution for navigation I've ever used. With the latest maps and updates it's far more reliable and responsive than the Nokia N8 with free maps. Of course my N8 does its job, and the navigation is okay for a free device but comparing the two I'll stick with TomTom. I've had it for over 4 years and it's still going strong.

    I guess that's the problem for TomTom now: the free offerings are getting better all the time and when something is free you're prepared to give it a little more slack. When my TomTom bites the dust, or the maps become too outdated, I'll probably end up sticking with the free solution despite it's irritations.

    I hope those losing their jobs find happiness and stability.

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  11. jonmorris

    TomTom for iPhone is fantastic.. but I think that they either failed to notice that other platform called Android, or they've got some deal with Apple that prevents them from making an app for anything else.

    That means TomTom is not only losing a huge chunk of revenue, but also allowing the competition to become more known in the Android space. I am not sure they can recover for this unless they hurry up, or at least make a statement that an app for Android (even Windows Phone) is coming.

    They did suggest an app back in May this year I believe, but it then went quiet. Very quiet. TomTom seems like a company that has failed to do anything significant this year - unless you see value in Tweeting people where you're going and when you think you might get there.

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