“The first analyst we’ve seen to comment on Google’s new Maps app for the iPhone is Needham’s Charlie Wolf,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“A dependable, well-designed iPhone map app benefits both companies, but Google probably more,” P.E.D. reports. “Google is in the advertising business, and the app should soon begin to generate location-based ad revenue from millions of iPhone users.”
P.E.D. reports, “If users flock to Google’s app it will slow Apple’s efforts to fix its own. ‘That’s because,’ Wolf explains, ‘users’ input is critical in improving the quality of the application, and Apple will now receive less feedback on its own Maps app.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple wanted Google Maps to offer iPhone users Street View, turn-by-turn voice-aided navigation, and vector-based, more data efficient, graphics.
Google told Apple, “No” (or perhaps they demanded to be paid), withholding such feature in order to try to peddle their iPhone wannabes.
So, Apple made their own Maps – which contains features not found in Google Maps (Flyover, for example) – and, poof!, Google Maps now offers iPhone users Street View, turn-by-turn voice-aided navigation, and vector-based, more data efficient, graphics.
For free.
Plus, Google lost the most important thing: iOS’ built-in Maps API. Developers who use Maps in their iOS apps use Apple Maps, not Google Maps. That means millions upon millions of ad impressions blown by Google that they’ll never get back, no matter how many ads they run, and they got nothing in return for it. In fact, they lost a bullet point off their Android phone sales pitch (free turn-by-turn nav.). With two major apps and a plethora of other excellent apps, Apple’s iPhone offers users the best and the most map features. You can’t get Apple’s Flyover on an Android iPhone wannabe device.
Google got played. Apple won the maps war. iOS users won, too, obviously. Google is now stuck trying to battle Apple to make the best iOS Maps app, on their own dime, and looking on enviously from the outside in – with just an app, not even a built-in app (the percentage of iPhone users who never even download a single app would boggle your mind: Half of all users), and no iOS built-in API – at significantly lost revenue because of their own pigheadedness.
Related articles:
Apple wins again: Much improved Google Maps iPhone app vindicates Cupertino’s strategy – December 13, 2012
Google Maps hits Apple App Store, Google admits iOS Maps app is better than Google Maps for Android – December 13, 2012
