Attention! Recently bought an HTC Hero or HTC Magic? Jealous of the iPhone 3GS with its shiny new Tom Tom app? Well fear not, Tom Tom hasn’t forgotten about little old Android. Speaking to tech blog Pocket Lint, Tom Tom confirmed the fledgling Smartphone OS is very much in its plans. Senior VP for Tom Tom Onboard Mobile Benoit Simery stated “We cannot ignore such a successful platform as Android. HTC is an important partner of ours and Android is becoming increasingly important too.”

The partnership Mentioned refers to the Tom Tom 7 application for Windows Mobile which graced several HTC phones running on the Windows Mobile platform. It would appear that Tom Tom are keen to revive the partnership with HTC and see Android as the perfect operating system to do so. With a range of quality devices already on the market including the excellent HTC Hero plus with even more on the horizon from big name players such as Sony Ericsson and Samsung, it would seem Android is a good horse to back when planning new apps.

But, unfortunately the good news offered by Tom Tom was also accompanied by some bad. The olive branch offered to Android was unfortunately not extended to BlackBerry. “I do not question the opportunity that RIM might offer but we know that a satnav device needs to have a large touchscreen and voice commands to be able to work for turn-by-turn navigation. We come from a PDA background and we know what will work.” Has this closed the door on similar non touchscreen OS’s such as Symbian? We’ll have to wait and see but with Nokia’s newly reinvigorated Ovi store offering Symbian apps to the masses and an ever increasing range of touchscreen phones, Nokia and their fan base will certainly hope not.

What about the future for Tom Tom? Is there room in this world for stand alone navigation devices when smartphones are becoming ever more powerful and, more importantly, more mainstream. Tom Tom like to think so; “There is nothing better than a satnav. It’s still superior. No smartphone can compete with a satnav and the integrated services that we can offer on our devices such as local Google searches, fuel prices, traffic information - we are still ahead of the game. There is still a strong market for dedicated devices. Very strong.” So, for the near future Tom Tom are happy to co-exist with smartphones running their software. What the future holds for Tom Tom as a hardware manufacturer remains to be seen.
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