This article is more than 1 year old

The Rise, Fall and Return of TomTom

Europe's biggest consumer tech company is back and wants you to wear it

Where do wearables go next?

With Apple and Pebble both repositioning their gear around health and fitness, it’s a sign the market is reaching maturity: flinging stuff against a wall doesn’t work any more. Vigreux sees the market like this.

“You have the smartwatch guys. At IFA Fossil had a lot of watches, fashion watches with some kind of tech. Then there’s the traditional guys like Garmin and us. And they’ve you got the activity tracker guys like FitBit. But Misfit is gone [acquired by Fossil], and Jawbone is struggling.”

I remarked that Microsoft had made a lavish and high-specced fitness band that few people seemed to want - but Microsoft presented the health data beautifully – much better than Apple or Google. TomTom goes one better and tries to find a trend - are you actually getting fitter?

“It’s an experience thing. The hardware is one small part of it. We’re making it very easy.”

Looking around at TomTom's range, the Bandit is the obvious standout, but the wearables and new navigation products all conform to a very practical industrial design and minimalist, well thought out interfaces. They're not trying to do everything – the curse of the smartwatch. Apple and Google designers couldn't decide what to leave out – so they stuck everything in.

The activity wearables TomTom launched yesterday are much cheaper and more focused. The £129 Touch, with a five-day battery life, attempts to guess your body composition. (Lard and ale, in my case). It's the only wearable to bother with notifications. The watch-styled range is also carefully focused, ranging from the £119 basic Spark 3, up to a £249 with more music storage, a cardio monitor and trails. (You can import a route you're going to walk or run from Google Maps).

Two other products caught the eye: a satellite-style SatNav for scooter riders, called the Vio, which provides a circular display with the map. (The grunt work is done by your smartphone). And most curious of all, a kind of activity tracker for your car, which plugs into your OBD (on board diagnostics port), called Curfer. It'll tell you how you're driving - if you didn't already know. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like