TomTom Places App Now Available on Android

RobBrady

TomTom Places has been available for free on Apple's app store for a while, and is now set for free download on Android.

The app allows users to locate things like restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions and shops, and then provides directions to these destinations. TomTom claim the database now has over 10 million different businesses.

As of yet, the TomTom Places for Android app is only available in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and The Netherlands and is supported in the local languages. It will be made available in Spain in December.

The technology relies on local business listing services - TomTom claim that by using local business listings, TomTom Places is more accurate and extensive than services like Yelp and Google Places.

On top of finding local businesses and services, TomTom Places provides directions to the chosen destination. But TomTom have pointed out that it will not provide turn-by-turn directions. For this to happen there would need to be a separate navigation app - something which is still not supported by the Android operating system.

"With Android’s market share reaching over 50% in most countries we have significantly increased our reach”, says Lucien Groenhuijzen, Managing Director TomTom Places. "People appreciate the search results and one out of two search requests lead to a call, e-mail or visit to the website via the application."

The app can be downloaded free of charge from Android Market

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Robert Brady

deverer · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 12, 2006 Posts: 5

So no UK English - when will it be available?

RobBrady · Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 3:05 pm Post subject:

Afraid no news on that yet.
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Robert Brady

MaFt · Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 4:23 pm Post subject:

From what I understand, TomTom Places is being rolled out by TomTom to fill in the gaps where Google Local isn't so good. Hence why both TomTom Places and Google Local searches are included on some devices.

As Google Local is quite good in the UK I can't see them rushing to release a local search for over here just yet. That's not to say they won't be though. It wouldn't surprise me if TomTom wanted to remove all 3rd parties from the equation when it comes to device features.

MaFt

peterc10 · Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 6:26 pm Post subject:

And the stupidity of all this is that Tom Tom still does not have a sat nav app for Android. You wonder why they waste their time producing this rather than concentrating on getting their mainstream app available on the quickest growing phone platform (as they should have done 2 years ago)!
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