“Apple’s steady stealth campaign to rival Google in maps continues apace,” Mark Bergen and Dawn Chmielewski report for Re/code.
“This month, the company acquired Mapsense,” Bergen and Dawn report, “a San Francisco startup that builds tools for analyzing and visualizing location data, according to multiple sources.”
Bergen and Dawn report, “Apple paid somewhere between $25 million and $30 million for the Mapsense 12-person team, which will now join the Cupertino company, according to two sources.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time. 😉
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 so badly botched by Apple (a simple “beta” tag would have sufficed) that it will take a sustained herculean effort to reverse the public misperception of Maps as inferior to Google Maps.
SEE ALSO:
Apple buys online transit-navigation service HopStop – July 20, 2013
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