Because if you can't make money selling car GPS navigation devices, you're going to stop making car GPS navigation devices.
I really don't see the connection between exiting a declining market and shitting on past customers. They are using as excuse:
As an illustration, in 2010 a map for Europe was 1.6GB, and today it is 6.5GB.
Clearly there are not four times the number of roads there were 8 years ago. They could have set up systems to spit out high resolution data for modern devices and low resolution data for older ones from the same dataset. But that would cost money to do and they cannot recoup that money, their mistake it seems to me was giving free lifetime map updates. They should have made them peppercorn cheap which would have allowed them to do what they needed with pricing later/now.
So it seems you don’t have a mobile phone, and the question of having an app on it is moot.
I did say “app”, and pointed this out earlier in the thread. The app is on when I need GPS routing, otherwise it is off. Just like your TomTom. The app actuallly allows me to switch off live tracking. Which is nice, but if everyone did it there’d be no traffic information.
Apologies Jaded, that came across wrong. s/you/one/ etc.
I do have a smart phone it's a googly one but I do all I can to limit the data harvest. Mostly that involves not having a google account, only using apps I can side load from f-droid, keeping data, WiFi & location off except when in use and keeping the bare minimum of personal data on it. Still I'd wager if I were to set up a google account and log in to it even from a new clean phone google would already know a frightening amount about the owner of my phone number. I would not be able to control data leak between a TomTom app and google, having the two on separate devices mostly achieves separation. Google knows the owner of this phone number frequently uses a device that reports itself via bluetooth to be a TomTom. That's all. Of course they also know in broad brush strokes where I go due to cell locations but not the addresses I visit. TomTom on the other hand know what model of phone I own and the phone numbers on it, data leak is pretty much unavoidable but I won't be blasé.
I'm not going to tell anyone how to behave with their personal data nor evangelise about keeping it secure, that's other peoples choice. For me, I choose to do what I can to limit leakage and always consider the cost/benefit of any data I hand over. I'm not sure what I shall do when my TomTom goes EOL, it won't be an app on my main phone simply because I would not be able to get the app without first having a google account. Perhaps a second phone just for google dependant apps.
By the way, on my device if I switch off live tracking I don't get the benefit of live rerouting. I accept live leakage of my location as the benefit is worth the cost.