Developers: We are your TomTom! Here is what we can do for you. From Cultura Ambassador Leandro Margulis

September 12, 2018

It was exhilarating to be on stage on September 5th at TechCrunch Disrupt, announcing one of the most important news that TomTom has made for the developer community to date: FREE Mobile Maps SDK.

But as the novelty of fresh news wears off, it is time to take a closer look at what this announcement truly means for you and why we are offering our core technology for free.

At TomTom, we put the developer at the heart of everything we do, and this announcement is the proof.

We are giving away what we do best for free, so that anyone building the next generation of location-aware applications can easily do so with unlimited map and traffic tiles for Android and iOS.

Because we are not your dad’s TomTom, or your mom’s TomTom. We are YOUR TomTom!

FREE means FREE

In our case, FREE means FREE.

All you need to do is create an account on the TomTom Developer Portal to get access to unlimited free map and traffic tiles for both iOS and Android.

We don’t require a contract or credit card information to sign up.

So you can be at ease in the knowledge that there is no asterisk to this offer: free means free.

Our passion

We are the original location technology experts. Mapping is our passion, and it has been so for 26 years.

Together with our partners, we touch the lives of one billion people every day. We enable our partners to bring innovative location, routing and driver solutions to market. And by making Mobile Maps SDK available to all for FREE, we now give any developer access to the world.

Quite literally :)

Let’s have a look at some use cases:

Maps APIs use cases

While there are as many use cases as developers, let’s examine three of them today. If you want to know how we can bring your specific use case to life, get in touch.

Mobility

We see how transportation is changing. From cars to scooters, we see our Maps APIs powering apps that help people move from A to B.

Here we can see how one developer is using our APIs to optimize the best way to pick up a passenger, including finding the best driver to get to a destination. This is one of the ways in which ride-sharing and ride-hailing apps can leverage TomTom Maps APIs today:

Our APIs also empower the smart cities of tomorrow, where location is key to connect vehicles, places and people with data to change our lives for the better.

In this example, we see how a developer uses TomTom Maps APIs to calculate a route for an electric vehicle, taking distance, driving time and energy consumption into consideration:

Fleet and logistics

We all order online and want to make sure our packages arrive right on time. We also want to be able to track these packages every step of the way around the world. Our APIs power these use cases.

We can track incidents the same way that we track packages. When our lives are in danger, we want to know that the emergency services we need can be with us as soon as possible. Using Maps APIs, the dispatch center can pick the fire truck or ambulance which will arrive at the location of an incident in the shortest amount of time:

The Connected Car

Autonomous driving is in sight. And while we are working towards that future, there are already vast amounts of innovation in the car and its environment today that are powered by maps.

One example is for developers building apps for leasing, car rental, car dealership or insurance companies. Knowledge is power when it comes to cost control and management of vehicle assets, and TomTom Maps APIs can give you the information you need to be efficient, from maintenance scheduling to de-fleeting.

Inspired?

Now that we have looked at some of the applications of TomTom Maps APIs, I hope to have inspired you to go and build the future of mobility. We are here to help you do just that – with our affordable Maps APIs and our free Mobile Maps SDK.

We can’t wait to see what YOU build!

Create your free account and get started today. No credit card required.