At WWDC 2009, Apple announced big news of the first known turn-by-turn navigation application available for iPhone 3G and 3GS users made by TomTom, one of the biggest players in portable navigation. This was expected, but exciting to see, as many iPhone users were hoping to have yet another great use for their iPhone: a portable GPS navigation unit for their vehicles.
After TomTom was announced, many people waited for its release, thinking it was the only option. Many of those who knew that there were other navigation applications being launched decided to wait for the release of the TomTom application, expecting it to be the best solution. However, after analyzing millions of online messages with Social Radar, it doesn’t appear to be a clear winner.
We compared the four largest navigation application competitors currently available on the iPhone App Store: Navigon MobileNavigator, TomTom, CoPilot, and AT&T Navigator . Here are some interesting findings.
First, we can see the obvious surge in chatter around TomTom upon its release on the App Store. We can also see that none of the other three navigator apps received hardly any buzz upon their launch.
Next, we did a sentimental comparison of the apps. Overall, these apps all appear to be pretty positive and are quite close in sentiment. CoPilot is slightly more negative than the rest.
And finally, we used Social Radar’s sentiment analysis to determine the most negative words used when referencing these applications to determine the issues and dislikes about each app.
Things worth noting:
The word problem appeared the least when referencing the TomTom app.
The word bad appeared the least in the Navigon MobileNavigator app.
The word slow appeared the most in the CoPilot app.
The word pricey appeared the least in the AT&T Navigator app.
Though it’s hard to make any conclusions of the obvious choice, one thing is for certain: TomTom is not the only choice. If you are in the market for an iPhone navigation device, make sure and do your research before buying into hype.
