Nothing
frustrates a GPS user more than map mistakes. After all, that is what a GPS is supposed to
do – efficiently route you to your destination on a map. Every user has an expectation, as unrealistic
as it is that the maps will always be timely and accurate.
Rational
users know that maps in your GPS will always and forever be a lagging
technology. The maps will ALWAYS be out
of date. The digital roads will always be
“built” after the physical roads are. Even
though we understand that, it doesn’t make it any less frustrating when we
experience a GPS map error.
However,
that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect the GPS industry to innovate and
compress the time between the physical road and the digital road. Has the legacy GPS industry done that? Are they resting or are they innovating?
Let’s
take a look at the legacy GPS industry – those manufacturers primarily deriving
their consumer revenue by selling hardware.
We know these brands well – Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, etc. These legacy manufacturers sell hardware that
contains digital maps on the device. Contrast that to a company like Google, Waze
or Mapquest that is primarily a software company that serves you the maps
online without dedicated GPS hardware.
(However, with Google’s announcement this week that offline maps are
coming to Google Maps for Mobile, the line will further blur – not good for the
legacy companies.)
Let’s
start with a basic undeniable truth. The legacy GPS industry as we know it is
threatened by the smartphone. That pressure is only going to increase not
decrease. Garmin tried to play in the
smartphone market but couldn’t shake the obsession to make hardware. The idea crashed and burned. Now they are trying smartphone idea 2.0 which
is the Garmin Smartphone Link app, which bridges the smartphone to the traditional
PND through a Bluetooth data connection.
The Android Market shows the app has been downloaded between 10,000 and
50,000 times. That is a paltry fraction
of the GPS market (Google Navigation has been downloaded between 100 and 500
MILLION times) so it remains to be seen how long Garmin’s approach will
continue to be supported by development resources. Coincidentally, a smartphone “link” to a PND
was something that TomTom did years ago, but for all practical purposes has
abandoned. In the smartphone space, TomTom
has been available for the iPhone for a while.
But as you know, they have been AWOL on Android despite talking about it
publicly for nearly 3 years now. Time will tell if it is too little, too late
should it ever become available. Garmin
too, has an iPhone app but has shown no signs of making a US app available for
Android.
This
is not a blog post to discuss the merits of a dedicated GPS versus a
smartphone. There are many things that a
legacy GPS does better than a smartphone.
But there is no question that the legacy GPS is finding itself in a
position of having to justify itself and its cost more and more every day. Why spend $399, $299, $199 or even $99 when a
smartphone solution is “good enough.” The
phrase “good enough” should make Garmin, TomTom and the others cringe! The only thing that the likes of Garmin and
TomTom should be focused on is to make their products so good that the
smartphone solutions aren’t “good
enough.” Alternatively, they could just
become really great software developers and get firmly in the smartphone app
game.
I come back to my opening paragraph and say that one of the things most important to GPS users is the maps. Customers want accurate and timely maps. Garmin could be leveraging their dominance in the industry by providing an innovative delivery mechanism for their maps. But to date, there is no public evidence that Garmin is or will do so. And finally, after a long introduction, that is the subject of my blog post today: the lack of innovation in the delivery of map updates.
Take
a look at some advertisements that you see from Garmin or TomTom. You'll see
that they are probably promoting the fact that their products have quarterly
map updates. But, let’s step back. Is
that supposed to be something consumers should be excited about? In 2012? I am not so sure about that. The fact that they still are advertising that
as a feature today, I would argue, points to a lack of innovation in their
industry. They should be embarrassed by that, not proud. I am not sure that they see it that way
though.
The maps that Garmin uses in their GPS devices actually come from a vendor, Navteq (owned by Nokia). TomTom’s maps come from TeleAtlas, which TomTom owns. I have absolutely no inside knowledge of how this works. The following is complete speculation on my part. I could be completely wrong on this, but I’ve observed the industry for long enough that I think I know some of the details of how it works.
The
quarterly update that you're spending hours downloading and installing tonight isn’t
accurate up to the time the map is released.
There is a lag between the data that Navteq provides to Garmin and the
data that Garmin actually sends out to customers. That seems obvious, but you still see posts
on the Internet from customers complaining that their street was added 6 months
ago – why isn’t it in the map update I just got?
There
is an additional lag inside Navteq.
Certainly Navteq faces a “cut off” point in order to prep their data for
delivery to Garmin. And thus the data
that Garmin gets from Navteq is also not the most current data available. It is only the most current data that Navteq
has in deliverable form. The actual data could be several quarters, to
a year old or more.
The other day, I discovered a simple map error. Within a large intersection, an errant one-way segment was defined. It prevented a simple left turn from one major road to a US highway. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder how the error gets there in the first place, that intersection hasn’t changed in 10 years, but nonetheless, it is there. It took me less than 5 min. to correct this error on Navteq’s website.
Five
minutes. The error was fixed, by me, in
five minutes. That, however, is not the
important timeframe to care about. The
question is, how long will I have to wait until that simple 5 minute fix ends
up in my GPS so the maps quit generating a ridiculous work-around at that
intersection? I will bet that I will
wait a year or more before I will see that error actually corrected in my
GPS.
Waiting
a year for a map error fix that took me 5 minutes to correct online will
ultimately try the patience of the legacy GPS consumer in a smartphone age to
the point that customers, at some point, will simply not put up with it any
more. Again, to sell a $299 PND in a smartphone
age Garmin has to justify that cost, every day.
Waiting over a year for a simple map correction is not a great way to
justify a $299 product cost to your customer.
If
the legacy GPS companies don’t start thinking and start innovating the delivery
of their maps quicker than they are, I believe that they will continue to lose
ground.
The
legacy GPS companies might argue that waiting one quarter for map updates is a
great thing, right? After all, it was only two years ago that we were receiving
map updates once per year. And, after
all, if you buy a car with a built in GPS, those updates are still only once a
year. See! The legacy GPS companies ARE being
innovative!
How
legacy companies do compared to built-in GPS companies isn’t the relevant
question. The relevant question is how the
legacy GPS companies do in comparison to their REAL competitors – nimble
software-thinking IT-centric companies that would laugh at thinking about the
prospect of only updating their product once a quarter. These competitors are going to eat their
lunch someday if they don’t change their approach.
In
the time Garmin has continued to offer only quarterly updates, other companies have
been thinking strategically and blowing the quarterly map delivery model out of
the water.
Of course I'm speaking about alternative map delivery approaches from the likes of Google Navigation and Waze. Now, let me make something perfectly clear before I go on. I am in no way suggesting that the current iteration of these competing products are best in class or that they are better products than my current legacy GPS. I do not believe that they are. But again, that isn’t the question. The appropriate question is are they “good enough” to not spend another $299 on a PND and rather, to “settle” for the free alternative. Garmin’s job is to widen the gap to the point that the answer is no. In my opinion, Garmin is doing nothing to widen the gap.
Whether
customers are familiar with Google’s MapMaker map editor or Waze’s editor is
not really the point. I would argue that
most customers also don’t contribute to Navteq’s Map Reporter or TeleAtlas’s
Map Insight editor either. The relevant
point is what happens downstream of those editors and what that means to the consumer.
Google
and Waze have revolutionized the mapping world by developing a solution that
pushes edited and moderated map changes to the customer quicker than the industry
has ever seen before. As a Google Trusted
Editor for my area, most edits that I map in Google MapMaker are updated instantaneously in the web version of
Google Maps. THAT is innovation. Those edits find themselves pushed to the
Google Maps for Mobile platform in a couple of weeks. Waze has a similar track record of updates,
making changes available to customers within weeks of the initial edit.
The
Google and Waze approach sets the bar going forward. It moves the “is it good enough” bar closer
to the free smartphone solutions and away from the dedicated PND. Garmin just sits and lets it happen. In my opinion Garmin is in a bit of a bind. After all, they are using Navteq maps, which
are owned by Nokia. Garmin gets to deal
with the corporate bureaucracy of Navteq and
Nokia, not to mention the bureaucracy within Garmin itself. The chance of nimble innovation with these
three goliaths is likely too much to ask for frankly.
TomTom was on the right track, purchasing TeleAtlas so they own both the map and the delivery mechanism for the maps (the PND and the software). However, looking at the example of TomTom for Android, TomTom has proven to be no more nimble now than they were when TeleAtlas was a separate company.
What
should Garmin do? Here is my
premise: It is INSANE that in 2012, we
are still downloading 2 GB map updates once per quarter. No, I not suggesting that we should be
downloading 2 GB map updates once per month or once per week. I am suggesting that we should be downloading
10 KB or 100 KB or 2 MB map updates once per day, once per week or on whatever
schedule we wish. TomTom is well known
for stating that 18% of the road network changes each year. If that is true, why are we downloading 100%
of the road network every single quarter?
If a single map update is 2 GB that means that only 360 MB of that map
actually changes in a year. Yet, in a
year, if we perform all 4 quarterly updates, we are downloading 8 GB of data to
obtain 360 MB of updates.
I
have to wait over a year for a small (but important to me) map update to get
incorporated into a massive 2 GB quarterly map update when it could have easily
been pushed to me as a 10 KB map update a couple weeks after I fixed the error
online.
Garmin
should be innovating and pushing incremental map updates to customers. Full 2 GB map updates should be history. Incremental map updates would move the bar
further away from the Google Navigation and Waze approaches and breathe life
towards Garmin’s corner in the battle of “is it good enough?” In fairness, TomTom does have their MapShare
program which pushes some incremental map changes to customers. However, we still face a large quarterly full
download every quarter regardless of whether we use MapShare.
Critics will say “you don’t get it.” And you are right, I probably don’t. But I shouldn’t have to either. I am the consumer and it is my $399 that
Garmin is trying to get. Clearly as the
industry leader, Garmin should have the intellectual talent to innovate in
these kinds of ways. What I believe they
lack is the will. The more product
generations that I wait over a year for a small map fix, the less likely it is
that I will spend that $399 again with Garmin.
THAT, I do get. The solutions
from Google Navigation and Waze are very close to “good enough” today and that
gap appears to be doing nothing but closing.
Garmin should be very concerned with that.
