~ TomTom Places will be available in more than 25 countries by the end of 2012~

Amsterdam, 19 June 2012 – TomTom is rapidly expanding its unique local search engine, TomTom Places. The service has recently been introduced in Sweden, Austria, Norway, Spain and Ireland and is now available in 10 countries across Europe.

TomTom Places is available online, on mobile as a free app for Android or iPhone, and integrated into TomTom navigation devices and in-dash navigation systems. Beyond the search, it lets users call or directly plan a route to the place they have found, taking into account the latest real time traffic reports from TomTom HD Traffic.

"More than 50% of all local searches are now carried out on a mobile device," says Rogier van Egmond, VP TomTom Places. "As a result, it's very important to us that TomTom Places is quick and easy to use on TomTom products. People ask for directions to a nearby place rather than the address and that's exactly what TomTom Places provides them."

In the Netherlands, TomTom has strengthened its restaurant database by a new partnership agreement with IENS Independent Index. "It is within our strategy to make our restaurant content available on all relevant mobile media. Obviously, TomTom was always high on our list of potential partners. We're thrilled that TomTom users can now easily find good restaurants while they're on the road." said Bas Lens Marketing Manager IENS.

In addition to geographical expansion, 20 million new Points of Interest have been added to the service in the last 8 months. While there were 5.5 million POIs in October 2011, there are 26 million today.

Notes for editors

Availability

TomTom Places is currently available in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Norway, Spain and Ireland.

People can access TomTom Places online, through their TomTom satnav or in-dash navigation system, or on the free TomTom app for iPhone and Android.

The trend in using mobile phones for local search

Last year, over half of all local searches were conducted on a mobile device. This figure is taken from an article by Brady Cohen: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/12706.html