In a win-win for both firms as they look to expand their respective reaches – almost literally – wireless technology and connectivity solutions firm Qualcomm Technologies has selected TomTom (TOM2) to deliver map data and application programming interfaces (APIs) to support its Aware Platform.
Headquartered in Amsterdam with 3,700 employees around the globe, TOM2 has been helping people find their way in the world for over 30 years. Using billions of data points and millions of sources covering hundreds of communities, it claims to offer the world’s smartest map, providing location data and technology to drivers, carmakers, businesses and developers. In addition to application-ready maps, products include routing, real-time traffic, APIs and software development kits (SDKs).
Qualcomm Aware is an internet of things (IoT) platform designed to deliver hardware, software, connectivity management and location solutions to improve asset tracking, supply chain management and other use cases. As part of the platform, users are said to be able to gain visibility into the location and environmental conditions of their goods and assets using a set of device-to-cloud APIs.
Supported by TomTom’s maps, Qualcomm said Aware will now offer transformative insights needed to mitigate risk, make more informed business decisions and navigate challenges across industries.
It will provide global asset visibility and control, providing organisations with the location awareness needed to address their challenges in a scalable and cost-effective way, providing users with real-time intelligence on their assets through the platform’s dashboards.
Using the latest maps from TomTom in conjunction with its proprietary positioning services, Qualcomm Technologies says the platform can deliver accurate, high-yield, power-efficient location services across an expanding array of connected devices, as well as premium map visualisation on customers’ personal dashboards.
“We’re proud to continue building on our longstanding relationship with Qualcomm Technologies and deliver our industry-leading maps and related APIs to the Qualcomm Aware Platform,” said TomTom chief revenue officer Mike Schoofs.
“By integrating TomTom maps with Qualcomm’s leading technologies, we enable real-world tracking and asset management applications and help power the next generation of IoT devices and the digital transformation across industries,” he added.
Rod Forter, senior director of business development at Qualcomm Technologies, said location awareness is increasingly crucial to many companies and a core component of the Qualcomm Aware Platform. “By collaborating with TomTom, we leverage industry-leading maps to help enable our customers to visualise their assets in the cloud for even the most advanced use cases,” he added.
The move is the second announcement in the space of a few weeks for Qualcomm in the field of IoT.
On 10 April, the company announced a collaboration with Qt Group to streamline the development of advanced graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and software quality assurance for industrial IoT so that device manufacturers can accelerate their products’ time to market.
It added that by using the enhanced development tools and framework, IoT manufacturers can apply advanced 3D graphics capabilities to their device’s UI, except in a much leaner package. It noted that other frameworks, such as game engines, also cater to high-fidelity graphics, but these normally include features that are not necessary for creating GUIs on IoT devices. Since the framework instead tailors its features to these IoT devices, Qt insists developers can build and run the UIs on far lower hardware requirements.