TomTom app launches on App Store

Navigation powerhouse TomTom has finally launched its iPhone application after more than a year of rumours about the project being in development.

TomTom Australia is available now via iTunes for AU$99.95 and looks to be a full-featured TomTom software solution, including TomTom's IQ Routes, speed camera alerts and location-based searches. It also sports a few iPhone-specific enhancements like portrait and landscape modes, pinch-to-zoom map controls and the ability to create a route by selecting the location of a contact from your address book.

Though it carries the most well-known brand name, the TomTom iPhone app isn't the first iPhone app to offer turn-by-turn directions and mapping to Australians. Sygic Mobile Maps and MobileNavigator Australia by Navigon are already available and are both cheaper at AU$79.99 and AU$69.99 respectively. TomTom will obviously trade on its name and experience in this field, and we're looking forward to testing the software for ourselves in the coming weeks.

TomTom showcased the application for the iPhone during this year's World Wide Developers Conference, coinciding with Apple's announcement that it would lift restrictions on developers wanting to create navigation tools, allowing them to create apps that deliver turn-by-turn navigation to users so long as they don't use Google Maps to do it.