“Shares of online recommendations purveyor Yelp (YELP) are up… following a note from Wedge Partners’ Brian Blair, who writes that the company could benefit from Apple‘s (AAPL) refresh of its own maps application, which he expects will be discussed during next Monday‘s keynote presentation at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
Even with Yelp’s solid growth in mobile, however, we believe that the issues surrounding Apple Maps have somewhat crimped Yelp’s usage by iOS users who initially had problems with Apple Maps, largely with its ‘accuracy’ …We expect to see numerous changes and feature updates announced for Apple Maps that significantly improve the user experience and ultimately increase adoption of the platform by existing iOS users. We believe this will be a positive for Yelp’s mobile metrics, particularly for CYQ4 and provide a stock catalyst, as we believe a better Apple Maps experience will increase Yelp usage by existing iOS users, many of whom continue to use alternative mapping platforms since last September. — Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair
Ray reports, “Fixes could include public transit directions, improved accuracy of labels and positions, improved directions, better context to local searches, and ‘an announcement of ‘human analysis,” writes Blair, as he thinks Apple needs to add something akin to Google’s roving fleet of cars that create Street View to improve accuracy.”
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