Five millionth Map Share™ improvement report

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TomTom announces five millionth Map Share™ improvement report

~ Community participation in TomTom’s proprietary map improvement technology grows 1000% in less than a year ~

Auckland – 16 December, 2008 - TomTom, the world’s leading navigation solutions provider, today announces that members of the TomTom Map Share community have made a total of five million map updates worldwide. This milestone results from a surging adoption of TomTom’s proprietary technology by the TomTom Map Share community, which has grown from half a million users at the beginning of this year to over five million users today.

Porirua building inspector and volunteer fire-fighter Andrew Mills is New Zealand’s biggest Map Share user with 96 changes on his TomTom GO 720 since May 2008.

Dubbed a TomTom Road Warrior, Mills says, “One thing is certain: roads are always changing. TomTom Map Share helps me block roads that can no longer be entered or give correct names to unnamed roads. Before Map Share I could maybe complain about map errors, but even if the map company fixed them it wouldn’t affect my map. Now I can fix many problems immediately on my device.”

Mills adds, “More importantly, Map Share makes my life easier and can help out others, so why not make the changes!”

Mr. Mills receives a new TomTom GO 720 as congratulations for being New Zealand’s TomTom Road Warrior and he says he knows exactly where it is going: “into the fire truck.”

TomTom is able to deliver the most up-to-date maps in a changing world by enlisting the help of its users worldwide. Map Share allows TomTom customers to make improvements to their map instantly on their TomTom navigation devices. Once checked by TomTom moderators, these updates are made available to the entire Map Share community, ensuring TomTom customers always have access to the most up-to-date maps. TomTom Map Share is certified by the prestigious German TÜV SÜD for its efficiency, intuitiveness and reliability.

“From the beginning we envisioned Map Share as a tool to help drivers contend with the frustration of unexpected road changes and to be used in between map updates,” said Corinne Vigreux, managing director TomTom. “To put this five million milestone in perspective: a one-hour trip made anywhere in Europe or North America will be influenced by twenty to thirty Map Share corrections.”

The success of Map Share is also due to the fact that the improvements made are those that customers really care about. This is clear due to the fact that the community has gone to the effort to report and share these corrections.
The significance of the milestone also becomes clear when one compares it to the 15,000 reports that Tele Atlas receives on average per month from end users via its online map reporting system, Map Insight.

Some interesting facts about Map Share changes include:

• the number of map changes worldwide is greater than the population of New Zealand
• hundreds of thousands of street names have been added
• close to a million roads that were incorrectly blocked (or open) are now included or excluded from TomTom routes

TomTom’s complete map package – high-quality maps pre-installed on all products, TomTom’s latest map guarantee™, the TomTom Map Update Service™ and Map Share - allows TomTom to provide customers with the most up-to-date and reliable maps in the industry.

Map Share corrections are available to TomTom customers via the TomTom HOME software, which comes standard with all TomTom devices.

ENDS

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