Apple’s mobile Operating system iOS 6 substituted Google Maps with its own service. Initial previews of the feature were critical and most accepted that Apple had a long way to go if it was looking to remove power of Google. Business Insider, a news website spoke with Waze CEO Naom Bardin about mapping services and why Apple decided to launch its own built-in mapping software. (Bardin did not address whether Waze was a partner, but his company is listed in the app’s copyright notices).
“One of the things that happened between Apple and Google may be the value Google was getting out of the relationship was failing Apple to the point of saying, ‘We are gong to make a huge bet’, ” Bardin says. “Their bet is that they can, within two years, build a product that will challenge with Google’s ten years of experience n both search and maps, and navigation, and all of these different things together.” That’s because maps are a core feature of many mobile applications, and the best way to integrate local ads is to display them on a map. Bardin tells that maps is the second most used product after mail on mobile devices, meaning that there is a huge opportunity to earn money. According to Bardin, Apple hopes that its app can bring in more than it did through its revenue share with Google.” The importance of the map in the new mobile ecosystem is really what drove this decision that ‘we have to own this component’,” Bardin says.
But Bardin says that Apple has taken a huge bet by partnering with TomTom, a maker of traditional GPS hardware that’s morphing into a mapping –data provider. Both Waze and TomTom are listed in Apple’s copyright notice as providers of map data. But Bardin’s observations suggest that Apple is relying predominantly on TomTom. “Apple went out and partnered with the weakest player,” Bardin says. “They are now coming out with the weakest data set, lowest and they are competing against Google, which has the highest data set. What’s going to happen with the Apple maps is that you are literally not going to find things. When you do find them, they might be in the wrong place or position geographically. And if you do have it, the route to it may not be the optimal route.” “They are saying many things that used to work on Google don’t work on Apple,” Bardin says. “Going forward now, we are going to see this around maps, it’s the question of how fast Apple can work their partners to update the data and how good the user experience will be.”
In a clarification, Mr. Bardin said Apple’s maps will not get you lost nor are they terrible. Well we all know how terrible or not the new service is!
Via: BusinessInsider