New offices for Mio in Belgium

Yesterday, in Belgium, in the presence of Patricia Ceysens, Flemish Minister for Economy, Entrepreneurship, Science, Innovation and Foreign Affairs and Matthew Miau, president of Mitac-Synnex, the official opening of the new Mio Technology building took place. The building in Asse, on the edge of Brussels, epitomises Mio's ambition to make developments that respond to local demand and marks the conclusion of their strategic expansion in Europe.

Growth

Including the new headquarters, Mio now owns three modern, fully-fitted offices in Europe: Brussels in Belgium, London in the UK and Warsaw in Poland. “Mio has performed exceptionally well in Europe since our launch onto this market just four year ago. The new offices are a reflection of our growth and success. This means that our three locations can serve the needs of each local market in a much more effective way and a first-class service can be offered to our customers”, says Paul Notteboom, president of Mio.

Old & new

The new office will replace the old building only a few kilometres further down the road. That’s where it all started in 2002 for Notteboom and his crew. Notteboom: “The old building served its purpose well for a while, but because of the enormous growth in personnel it had become way too small. It was clearly time for this new, spacious and modern building.

Hard

The Mio brand was created in 2002 by MiTAC International and within a year of its entry into Western Europe gained a respectable market share. But Mio is also struggling at the moment. The takeover of Navman at the beginning of this year has proven to be a tremendous challenge and resulted in a lot of changes within the company. One of the results is that the Benelux market share has dropped below 10% for the first time in years. And a loss like that is not easily reversed in a dog-eat-dog market like the one for navigational devices.

Still, Notteboom remains positive: “We don’t have to deny that Europe currently poses a problem, but all those changes have made for a stronger worldwide footprint. A because of that I believe the future is bright. After the summer we’ll continue down the same innovative path and will continue to develop new products and technologies”.

Moov

Last March Mio announced the new Moov range: the first results of the merger of Mio and Navman. In developing these new devices, the intention was to combine the strengths of both the ‘old’ Mio and Navman; the Moovs are based on hardware developed by Mio Technology while the software was cooked up in the Navman kitchen.

The Moov 200 and 330 are already available in the shops, the Moov 370 will probably follow later this month. Look out for a complete review of the new Moovs on this site very soon!