What exactly is TomTom's New Maps Platform?
TomTom announced a new map platform:
To create a standard base map that anyone can contribute to and benefit from, the TomTom Maps Platform is bringing together a pool of map content from map users around the world. The resulting geolocation database – the largest available today – feeds continuous improvements back to the map, helping it keep up with reality.
The pool is filled with an array of sources, including OpenStreetMap, sensor-derived observations (SDO) from millions of vehicles, probe data and shared points of interest (POI). It’s a dizzying amount of data that we quickly make sense of, validate and act on.
There’s a marketing page and a video featuring dramatic music and Steve Coast saying very little: “Maps are used way more than people think but it’s invisible to us. As things get quicker, we have to change the way we think about maps.”
Is this new product primarily OpenStreetMap data and some additional data sprinkled on top? Does it have an API? Map tiles? An SDK? It’s hard to tell as the material was written by marketing people for people in suits.
We will have to wait for further announcements to understand what TomTom’s new map platform can do.