TomTom adds iPod Touch support to sat-nav app

After some to’ing and fro’ing, TomTom has added support for the original iPhone and iPod Touch to its in-car navigation app.

The changes comes with the latest 1.2 update to TomTom’s app, but the lack of built-in GPS on the iPod Touch and mean that TomTom’s GPS-enabled Car Kit is a must if you actually want to use it for navigation.

We really want to like the TomTom sat-nav solution — we’ve long been fan of the TomTom software on both its standalone devices and on handhelds like the Palm Treo 650. Even without built-in GPS, the car cradle is very well designed too, but the problem is the price.

The TomTom Car Kit costs £99.95 and the app is £59.99. This means that you have to pay £159.94 just to use your £149 iPod Touch as an in-car sat-nav device.

At the moment, the cheapest TomTom standalone sat-nav is the TomTom Start UK and Ireland (the same maps as the iPhone app) at £99.99 — one third the cost of the iPod Touch kit.

We’re not sure what TomTom’s model is here, or how many copies of its app it has sold, but here’s something to note. The CoPilot Live (iTunes link) app costs £26.99, has over 1,800 user reviews and is currently the top-grossing app in the App Store. The TomTom app costs twice as much, has almost 700 reviews and is currently the fourth top-grossing app.

So, we suspect that TomTom has tweaked the app to support the iPod Touch and original iPhone in an attempt to increase its sales, but we think a price drop would have a bigger impact.

[TomTom @ iTunes]