TomTom reported that its sports business continued to gain traction in the third quarter as it improved awareness of its Cardio GPS watches, built out its sports distribution network and launched its first GPS watch for golfers.
The Dutch company said growing sports sales helped offset a decline at its Consumer segment, where revenue declined 9.3 percent to €154 million ($204 mm) in the quarter compared with €170 million in the third quarter of 2013. Automotive hardware revenue declined to €15 million ($20 mm) compared with €19 million in the year earlier quarter.
TomTom reported that the rate of decline of the PND market slowed, during the quarter as smartphones continue to displace PNDs, or personal navigation devices, a term European use to refer to road navigation devices. TomTom estimates 2.1 million PNDs were sold in Europe, down 6 percent compared to the third quarter of 2013. TomTom estimated its share of the market at around 51 percent, in line with the same quarter last year.
The PND market in North America was 0.9 million units, 16 percent lower compared to the third quarter of 2013. TomTom estimated its share of the North American PND market at around 15 percent.
TomTom did not provide volume figures for its sports products, but said they did helped offset the decline in PND and Automotive sales during the quarter.
“We made good progress with our sport business,” said TomTom’s CEO Harold Goddijn. “We continued to strengthen the awareness of our Cardio GPS watch and are on track with the expansion of our sports distribution network. Our investment in this category is increasing as we are building a multiproduct consumer business. We extended our sport product range with the launch of TomTom Golfer. The watch uses GPS technology to automatically recognize the golf course and to find the next hole. It also includes relevant data, such as distances to hazards and layups, from over 34,000 golf courses across the globe.”
