Apple (AAPL) May Buy TomTom to Save Maps
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Rating Summary:
52 Buy, 12 Hold, 1 Sell
Rating Trend: = Flat
Today's Overall Ratings:
Up: 11 | Down: 18 | New: 13
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Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) venture into maps has been called a "unmitigated disaster" by some and more recently the Australian police warned that flaws in the software could be "potentially life-threatening." To save face and improve the service, one analyst is predicting the iPhone giant buy navigation system provider TomTom NV.
Rabobank International analyst Hans Slob sees a 30 percent chance that Apple buys TomTom in an effort to quickly make the necessary changes and correct mapping problems.
"TomTom needs the cash from Apple, and Apple needs the know-how of TomTom," said Slob.
The analyst said Apple could pay up to EUR 10 per share for the company, or more than double the current price of 4.12 EUR.
As would be expected, shares of TomTom surged in overseas trading on the speculation.
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Rabobank International analyst Hans Slob sees a 30 percent chance that Apple buys TomTom in an effort to quickly make the necessary changes and correct mapping problems.
"TomTom needs the cash from Apple, and Apple needs the know-how of TomTom," said Slob.
The analyst said Apple could pay up to EUR 10 per share for the company, or more than double the current price of 4.12 EUR.
As would be expected, shares of TomTom surged in overseas trading on the speculation.
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Analyst Comments, Insiders' BlogComments
Instead of buy TomTom, sue them! Buy Garmin, a real map company.
TomTom's data is so out of date and so flawed that buying them would only prolong the pain. Add to that the horrific registration of their maps and their data integration issues, and you have a real disaster called Apple Maps.
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Just buy them!
Digital Map Man on Dec 14, 2012 05:44 PMMark as Spam | Reply to this comment
Buying a good map company is better than outsourcing map data from India.
Good base map data equals good online maps. Errors will ALWAYS be found by unlucky users. You can't fix many map data errors programatically, I and others have tried. It is best to load the best data you can get and build on it.