2. TomTom Presents Three New Personal Navigation Devices, Including the Go 930

TomTom decided to flex its muscles at the 2008 CeBIT show with three new products, including the long waited TomTom Go 930, as well as the Go 530 and the Go 730. All of these new personal navigation devices (PNDs) offer interesting new features: IQ Routes, Advanced Lane Guidance and Complex Junction View. The last two are not really huge innovations in the car navigation market, since many other GPS brands already feature highway lane assist and realistic signpost indicators. TomTom still did a good job, as you can see from the pictures. Driving on highways now will be significantly easier for TomTom users.

The most interesting novelty is IQ Routes, included in the new software Navigator 8. Until now, the PND only knew the maximum allowed speed for any road; this could lead to incorrect arrival time calculations, since in congested areas you may in fact travel at as little as one tenth of the maximum posted speed. To understand the realistic speed of the drivers, TomTom has collected the data of thousands of their customers who wish to contribute their PND logs to the project via TomTom Home and Map Share. The Dutch company has received 500 million speed measurements per day over the last two years, collecting 100 billion data points from drivers covering 7 billion kilometers, visiting the same locations thousands of times. In practice, this means that TomTom now knows the real average speeds of almost every road, and thanks to IQ Routes the new Go can calculate the most ideal routes.

Back to the new products: The TomTom Go 530 has 1 GB of ROM that holds the map of a single country or region; the Go 730 has the same features as the 530, but has 2 GB of ROM and includes the maps of 31 European countries. The top of the line is the TomTom 930, with 4 GB of flash memory and preinstalled maps of 35 European countries as well as the USA, Canada and Russia.

These PNDs will be available at the end of April; the launch prices should be in line with those of the previous generations.