Harold Goddijn

Harold Goddijn (born May 23, 1960) is the acting CEO of TomTom, a Dutch manufacturer of automotive navigation systems.

After studying Economics at the University of Amsterdam, he founded Psion Netherlands BV in 1989. He has served on the Management Board of Psion Computers Plc., and was appointed CEO of TomTom in 2001.

Goddijn was once invited to a Bilderberg Group[1] meeting.

TomTom

Goddijn had seen major success from his company, TomTom, in the early years of the 2000s decade. In 2003, TomTom's satellite navigation system (Satnav) product had taken a significant share of the market for automobile navigation systems. In Europe TomTom had taken a 45% market share and a 21% market share in America. The TomTom Satnav product proved to beat out its competitors from Garmin and Magellan.

In 1989, Goddijn got involved with Psion as a joint venture and called it Psion Netherlands; his wife, Corinne Vigreux, was also a Psion sales director. Psion Netherlands quickly became one of Europe's largest distributors for Psion products. In 1991, Goddijn's wife left her position as sales director for Psion to help found Palmtop Software; a company that specializes in creating applications for portable pocket computers. Goddijn invested in Palmtop Software in turn for some equity and a partnership with the co-founders Peter-Frans Pauwels and Pieter Geelen. This partnership has lasted over 20 years and they still work together to this day. Palmtop Software completely changed their name and their image and is now known as TomTom.[2]

Sources

  1. ↑ "Bilderberg Meetings".
  2. ↑ Harold Goddijn: TomTom's founder needs his business to turn the corner; Juliette Garside; The Guardian; November 24, 2011


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