Continuing our question to Brizzleize the rest of Europe, a quick look at TomTom, Amsterdam-based makers of SatNav toys for cars.
This is their office, near the train station and and tram halt
And round the corner from the flat rate 1-euro stop/go bus service.
This company is a little part of Bristol, in disguise. How so?, people ask.
Take a look at their marketing blurb.
Their business model is built around selling satellite navigation tools to car drivers. With new cars building it in, and a lot of old cars already fitted with existing models, TomTom need to sell boxes to the hold-outs, those people who drive around with a 1993 A-Z in the glove compartment, they need to convince everyone with an existing TomTom to upgrade. Yet the rate-of-obsolescence of old products is determined mainly by the rate-of-change of road infrastructure: new roads, new road restrictions. Predictable and generally manageable by people who can upgrade every fiew years -no easy way to switch to a subscription model for timely updates on one-way systems.
As for drivers who don't even have SatNav, maybe they don't believe they need it.
TomTom need to come up with a way to convince everyone they need SatNav; they need something to fear. What have they come up with: schoolchildren. As in "schoolchildren or shopping crowds can slow you down. "
To ensure that you can drive across the city at the fastest speed the city allows, even if there are schoolchildren around, you need a new TomTom device, one with a subscription to "TomTom IQ Routes", that knows about traffic. Presumably, then, it laughs at you if you want to go up to the lake district on a Friday evening in summer, or shakes its virtual head if you try to bring up any route on a Saturday in July and August that involves the M5 motorway bridge over the Avon. Implementation details aside, however, the key point is that this company, based in Amsterdam, whose staff appear to walk, cycle, bus, train or tram into work, are selling products to our city's drivers that claim to help navigate them away from peak pedestrian schoolkid densities on their journeys. Which is clearly a little bit of Bristol, lurking in the centre of Amsterdam.
To ensure that you can drive across the city at the fastest speed the city allows, even if there are schoolchildren around, you need a new TomTom device, one with a subscription to "TomTom IQ Routes", that knows about traffic. Presumably, then, it laughs at you if you want to go up to the lake district on a Friday evening in summer, or shakes its virtual head if you try to bring up any route on a Saturday in July and August that involves the M5 motorway bridge over the Avon. Implementation details aside, however, the key point is that this company, based in Amsterdam, whose staff appear to walk, cycle, bus, train or tram into work, are selling products to our city's drivers that claim to help navigate them away from peak pedestrian schoolkid densities on their journeys. Which is clearly a little bit of Bristol, lurking in the centre of Amsterdam.
One question though. If it does aim to steer you away from schoolkids walking around, what does it do when you ask it for a route on that morning school run?