“Later this year, Apple is planning to oust Google Maps as the preloaded, default maps app from the iPhone and iPad and release a new mapping app that runs Apple’s own technology, according to current and former Apple employees,” Jessica E. Vascellaro and Amir Efrati report for The Wall Street Journal.
“Apple could preview the new software, which will be part of its next mobile-operating system, as soon as next week at its annual developer conference in San Francisco, one person familiar with the plans says,” Vascellaro and Efrati report. “Apple plans to encourage app developers to embed its maps inside their applications like social-networking and search services. Apple has been hatching the plan to evict Google Maps from the iPhone for years, according to current and former Apple employees.”
Vascellaro and Efrati report, “Mobile ads associated with maps or locations are estimated to account for about 25% of the roughly $2.5 billion spent on mobile ads in 2012, according to Opus Research, up from 10% in 2010. That is expected to grow as the number of location-aware software apps grows. But more than ad revenue, Apple is going after the map market to have more control over a key asset in the widening smartphone war. Google Maps is used by more than 90% of U.S. iPhone users. So Apple believes controlling the mapping experience and offering features that Google doesn’t have can help sell more devices and entice developers to build unique apps for iPhone users.”
“In the short term, Google will lose some ad revenue and miss out on data about what local businesses people are searching for—which it uses to pitch retailers on buying certain ads,” Vascellaro and Efrati report. “Longer term, it is likely to hurt Google’s ability to generate map-related revenue, according to former Google employees.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Google won’t just lose “some” ad revenue, they will lose access to the best demographics and the most highly-coveted users (iOS users, who actually spend money to buy things) and their data.
Depriving Google of data is like depriving a vampire of blood.
Inch by inch, Apple hammers home the wooden stake.
Google’s going to rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them. – MacDailyNews Take, March 09, 2010
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