Philips: no PND market entry after all

Rudy Provoost of Philips' consumer electronics division announced today that his company won't produce any PND's. He claimed that the company believes that there are already too many players on the personal car navigational market and that Philips has too little chances of success because of this.

Announcement

Last June, Philips announced that around mid-September they would enter the world of personal navigation. Their PND series would consist out of three models: the PNS 100, the PNS 120 and the PNS 150.

Just before the introduction date, Philips realized that they had been too optimistic when they announced their release date and they promptly postponed the release of their first PNDs until Q1 of 2007. At that time, Provoost still claimed that "forbearance is no acquittance", and that Philips would enter the PND market for sure: "It is a rapidly growing segment with a lot of value. Personal navigation is currently the fastest growing segment in consumer electronics". These words turned out to be of little value today.

Good news

Philips' announcement was good news for one other company: the exchange rate of the TomTom stock immediately rose after Philips' announcement. It seemed that investors were very happy that the personal navigational market would be denied of yet another big competitor.