Paris, France: Telmap may swap some of its business with Nokia Oyj’s digital map maker Navteq for rival maps suppliers like TomTom NV’s Tele Atlas, said Oren Nissim, CEO of Telmap at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris.
Nissim said that he was reviewing its relationship with Navteq, its key map data supplier, in the light of the latter’s USD 8 billion acquisition by Nokia. “We are looking at our relationship with Navteq. We probably will make some changes,” Nissim said, hinting at a move to Tele Atlas which is the only competitive alternative in the digital map market.
TomTom Shares edged up 1.1 percent higher to 5.295 euros after Nissim’s comments at the Summit.
Nissim also said Telmap, which offers location-based services about traffic data and speed cameras, was changing its business model to stay competitive with free navigation offerings from Nokia and Google.
Telmap is in the middle of a transition from a subscription company to offering its services in cooperation with telecom operators such as Vodafone Group Plc and Telefonica SA — a strategy which it expects to boost its client base from a current 1.5 million to up to 15 million. It will generate less revenue per subscriber from those deals, but a rise in client volumes will offset that, resulting in revenue growth. However, given the transition to its new subscriber model, it is not currently planning to go public.
Telmap, which at the moment is slightly profitable, spends about 80 percent of its revenue in development of new products. “We are in a transition phase. In that transition phase there are a lot of questions. I think it’s a lot better for everyone to keep focused especially since revenue is coming in. It’s probably better to stay focused,” continued Nissim.
“We are not venture capital backed. I don’t think there’s a question around their commitment,” Nissim said. “We want to see the shift happening before we consider these steps happening.”
Source: Reuters
