What does a search engine have to do with a road map or with airline tickets? On their own they have nothing to do with one another, but I don’t have to tell you that I am obviously hinting at Google, the company that appears to be doing everything and better than everyone. What is Googles industry? Hard to tell in one sentence…
Nice for them, but for other companies this creates a big threat. Companies that are flexible and can adapt to the new changes flourish, whilst companies that fail to adapt and are not able to change their core business suffer. Today the news came out that TomTom, the navigation service, lost more than a quarter of their value at the stock market. This means more than half a billion dollars went up in smoke.* And why?
Because of the fact that happened what TomTom deemed to be impossible and therefore wouldn’t happen: Renault, Nissan and Mitsubushi will from 2021 on deliver the maps for the navigation and entertainment systems for those cars. And analytics predict that other brands will follow soon… What’s left for TomTom? Well, if they don’t come up with a feature or product that puts them ahead of Google again it could be over for them very, very soon…
What does this show us? It shows us once again how a company that operates in different industries crushes a company that is specialized in one single industry. By thinking that the automotive industry wouldn’t switch to Google anytime soon they underestimated Google and dug their own grave. It is ever so important for companies now to keep moving and keep innovating. TomTom was too arrogant and have now, ironically, clearly lost their way…
*https://nos.nl/artikel/2250947-tomtom-daalt-hard-op-de-beurs-automakers-kiezen-voor-concurrent-google.html
