TomTom posts loss after Tele Atlas writedown

Satnav-maker TomTom has posted a loss of €989m (£875m) for the fourth quarter of 2008, largely because it wrote down the value of Tele Atlas by around a billion euros.

TomTom's pretax profits for the quarter were already down by 46 percent compared with the same quarter in 2007, but the Tele Atlas write-down dragged it firmly into loss territory.

TomTom bought Tele Atlas for €2.9bn (£2.6bn) midway through last year, following a bidding war against Garmin. Around a year earlier, Nokia bought Navteq - one of Tele Atlas's main mapping rivals - for £4bn.