“Apple Inc. agreed to buy online transit-navigation service HopStop.com Inc., people with knowledge of the deal said, seeking to improve mapping tools after a rocky debut for its directions software last year,” Peter Burrows and Sarah Frier report for Bloomberg. “The people asked not to be identified because the deal isn’t public.”
“HopStop shows users in more than 500 cities the fastest way to travel by foot, bike, subway and car; Locationary deploys real-time data from a variety of sources to help users find featured businesses,” Burrows and Frier report. “HopStop, based in New York, provides directions for more than 140 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and six other countries, according to its website.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One thing Apple will have a difficult time buying: Respect for their Maps app, no matter how superior it gets over all others (and many parts of it already are – and even were at launch).
It’s unfortunate, but first impressions were badly mishandled by Apple (a simple “beta” tag would have sufficed) and it will take a herculean effort to reverse the public misperception now.
Related articles:
Apple escalates maps war by nabbing Locationary – July 19, 2013
Apple acquires crowdsourced location data company Locationary – July 19, 2013
Google’s new 3D Maps destroy Manhattan with melting buildings and buckled streets – May 22, 2013
U.S. patent application reveals Apple is working on ‘Street View’ mapping technology – April 4, 2013
Apple acquires indoor location company WifiSLAM for $20 million – March 23, 2013
