TeleNav claims Google’s free navigation is helping their business
Jun 14, 2010 google, gps navigation, telenav
There’s an interesting article on Forbes on Sal Dhanani, TeleNav’s vice president of products and marketing talking about Google’s recent expansion into 10 new European countries and Canada; offering completely free GPS navigation service following US and UK. TeleNav says this is raising awareness in the market and there are still plenty of people who are willing to pay for GPS navigation service.
TeleNav offers their navigation software to Sprint and AT&T and many more operators in Canada, South America, and even China and believes free services offered by Google, Nokia, and Microsoft can not compete with their own GPS navigation software.
TeleNav must feel threatened though since they’ve started experimenting mobile ads which show up as sponsored listings when you do a search. They even sell movie tickets partnering with Fandango where they get a cut from each sale.
What do you think about TeleNav’s business model? Do you think they’ll survive given all these free navigation services around?
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June 15th, 2010 at 1:47 am
Google navigation is free, that is nice. But when you travel outside your country (and in Europe that is not to difficult) the data costs for roaming are extremely high. Then you need a fall back navigation solution. I like Navigon.
So Google navigation for domestic use is ok, but if you travel abroad you need some alternative.
August 17th, 2010 at 9:57 am
I like this telenav my frind has it