GRMN is officially out on the bid war for map makers. I thought it was an expensive and bad take over decision for GRMN in the first place. However it may very well be, GRMN original bid was a strategical move to force TOMTOM to raise their take over price. Tom-tom’s takeover will hardly be profitable financially in itself and having taken over another unprofitable subsidiary it will take some time to recover from debts and etc.  

With some personal exposure to the map industry and incorporated it into strategical systems, I doubt the maps are that hard to make. Some expert suggested maps like Navteq or teleatlas provide would take about a billion dollars and about 10years to make. It might even be less than that. One thing for certain is that by building a map system from ground up, it would save lots money or about 2.3 billions worth compare to the current price tag of TeleAtlas at 3.3Billions from Tom-Tom’s offer. GRMN can now build maps to suit its systems and with likely possibilities of a few intellectual properties in the way to make GRMN products unique.

In the meanwhile, GRMN will still have ample supplies of maps until 2019 with NAvTEQ. Out of this instance, I see GRMN as a dominant player with a smart “head on its shoulder.”