Apple Poised to Develop It’s Own Mapping System for the iOS

28 Mar Apple Poised to Develop It’s Own Mapping System for the iOS

For more than a year now, Apple’s “geo-team” has been hustling on some sort of project and has even posted a job offering for an iOS Maps Application Developer with talent in object-oriented software design, programming, and the development of sophisticated user interfaces.

The iPhone currently uses a Google Maps application that has a certain level of success, but is less impressive than it’s Android counterpart. Apple’s mapping assets were boosted with the acquisition of Google Maps’ main rival Placebase back in 2009 as well as Poly 9 in 2010. These actions were in conjunction with the recruitment and hiring of new personnel for their team.

Google Maps carries sponsored links and Apple wants a piece of that pie as well. Does this spell doom for Google Maps as the default
mapping provider for the iPhone? Maybe, but this might push Google to finally create Google Maps Navigation for the iOS platform or the voice guided GPS navigation system application, which is currently only seen in Android devices.

It will be interesting to see how Apple will come up a mapping product that will illustrate their definition of what a mapping experience is. If they succeed in doing so, then it’s probably “asta la vista” for Google Maps as the default application in the iOS.