Lexus navigation disappoints , NaviExpert shines

Recently I started to drive the Lexus CT 200h. This fuel-efficient hybrid car is really a pleasure to drive.

Before my travel to Poland -  a week ago - I asked a  Lexus dealer in Eindhoven  to install the newest June 2013 update of the navigation maps,  despite my experience with car navigations described in my previous post

To my disappointment I could not find a lot of places in Poland but it was not due to the bad maps. Apparently the Lexus navigation expects you to use the special Polish characters  which was not the case in my previous navigation which I used in my BMW. It was explained to me by a very helpful and kind  Lexus dealer in Krakow. 

However the way the selection of special characters works is far from being user friendly. First you need to enter a proper sign and then a character on the second screen. I find this very inconvenient especially while you are driving; I believe that the way BMW navigation handles special characters find is much better and safer.

On the way back from Warsaw to Berlin I was completely lost when my navigation tried to “take me away” from the A2 motorway, as the navigation was not aware of the almost 100km A2 motorway between Warsaw and Lodz (Strykow) which has been opened in June 2012!

After finally recognising the A2 motorway the POI of the Lexus navigation could identify only ONE petrol station and NO parking places anywhere on the  400km  A2 motorway from Lodz to the German border!

For that experience I “only” paid 180 Euro.

A good example of a very fast maps update is a Polish smartphone navigation NaviExpert which just two days after the opening of a new part of Expressway S2  connecting Warsaw with A2,  was able to navigate me through this road to the A2. Fortunately I had enough smartphone navigation apps allowing me to drive the fastest way back to Holland. 

This bad experience with the Lexus navigation only strengthened my believe, I described in my previous post,  that the future of the car navigation systems belongs to smartphone based navigation apps.
The recent Waze acquisition by Google shows the importance of engaging driving communities in updating, real time, the status of the road conditions and providing the maps updates.

The iPad is coming

In the last few days iPad's todays introduction got lots of attention in the news.

According to the Admob survey 11% of smartphone users are interested in purchasing an iPad.
I have to admit that I am one of them.

However, I will wait until the 3G version is available so I can read newspapers real time in a train on my way to the office. Is it going to replace my new netbook?

I believe that newspapers have high expectations for the iPad and are already looking for new business models for iPad users.

I went through my favourite newspapers on my iPhone and each of them had at least one article devoted to the iPad introduction including announcements of own iPad applications !

In The Wall Street Journal Walter Mossberg already asks the key question in the title “Laptop killer? Pretty Close”and further summarizes “”iPad Is a ‘Game Changer’ That Makes Browsing and Video a Pleasure ; Challenge to the Mouse”

In The New York Times David Pogue in his article “Looking at the iPad From Two Angles” addresses two groups of readers: “techies” and “anyone else.”

In the “techie” part he writes “Surfing the Web is a heck of a lot better than on the tiny iPhone screen – first because it’s so fast , and second, because you don’t have to do nearly as much zooming and panning”

For “non techies” he writes: “But the real fun begins when you try the apps that were specially designed for the iPad’s bigger screen”, “ Newspaper apps will reproduce the layout , photos and colors of a real newspaper”

This is how The New York Times advertises its iPad Editor’s Choice Application:

“Enjoy the award-winning journalism of The New York Times with the unique functionality and navigation of the iPad. The Editors’ Choice application offers a limited selection of latest news, opinion and features that are automatically updated to your device and free of charge.“

More about how newspapers and magazine publishers plan to support iPad platform you can read on CNET “New York Times prominent among media iPad apps”

The Polish second largest daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza (25k downloaded GW iPhone readers applications so far) in the article “Publishers are awaiting iPad which may change their business”stresses high interests in iPad among leading Polish publishers and reports that despite the fact iPad is going to be available later in Poland “The best brains in media business are looking for ways to monetize it.”

This new user experience and opportunity to build direct relationships with readers via iPad applications explains why the leading newspapers do pay so much attention to iPad introduction as iPad platform can shape new opportunities to monetize on the content and personalized advertisements.

It is no wonder that among iPad ready websites quite a lot of them belong to magazines and newspapers.

I would bet that the iPad will have as much impact on the publishing industry as the iPod had on the music industry.