When Apple launched its Maps back in 2012 it quickly became the laughing-stock of the internet. Streets and town were missing, famous landmarks were misplaced or distorted… Apple proved to the whole industry that creating a really good global mapping service is harder than one can expect.
Today Apple Maps is a different story. After a terrible start in September 2012 the company hired hundreds of people to its maps department. It gradually fixed most of the errors as*users submitted them. But most of the Apple Maps technologies and features come from acquisitions…
Here is a list of all mapping start-ups acquired by Apple and why Apple needed it:
#Purchase dateCompanyDescriptionWhy acquired? 1 Jul 2009 Placebase Placebase was an online mapping service from LA which specialized in integrating private and public datasets using their custom API. Apple needed Placebase to merge data from multiple different global providers. 2 Jul 2010 Poly9 Poly9 was Canadian start-up that also specialized in merging spatial data. The company also offered geo visuzalization tool Poly9 Globe which was a custom made Google Earth. Poly9 was a talent acquisition to merge mapping data as well as to create Flyover city tours. 3 Aug 2011 C3 Technologies C3 Technologies specialized in 3D mapping solution based on SAAB’s military technology. It automatically combined Lidar point clouds with areal images. Acquisition of this Swedish company allowed to gather data for Flyovers. 4 Mar 2013 WiFiSlam WiFiSlam was a California-based start-up that developed indoor location-based technology that use Wi-Fi signals to detect a mobile phone user's location. It allowed Apple to improve it's outdoor and indoor positioning APIs as well as iBeacon technology. 5 Jul 2013 Locationary Locationary offered management and exchange platform for local business data. Good mapping service cannot work without an access to geocoded Point of Interest. 6 Jul 2013 HopStop HopStop was a web platform offering door-to-door online transit-navigation services. Apple needed out-of-the box solution for public transit to be added to Maps 7 Aug 2013 Embark Embark was public transit app with 0.5 million users world wide. HopStop was not enough
8 Dec 2013 BroadMap BroadMap was a comprehensive mapping and GIS company with several different products and services. Apple needed BroadMap’s expertise in managing, sorting, and analyzing mapping data. 9 Jun 2014 Spotsetter Spotsetter was a social search engine that made personalized recommendations for places to visit and things to try. Spotsetter was needed to join maps and Siri in a smart way. 10 Apr 2015 Coherent Navigation The company is specialized in high-precision satellite positioning, which combines standard GPS with data from the Iridium satellite communications constellation. Coherent Navigation is the first step to build positioning service for Apple's car. 11 Sep 2015 Mapsense Mapsense is one of cool geo visualization platforms allowing easy mapping for everyone. We can suspect that 12 people team who will join Apple’s offices will focus on data analytics than on improving Apple Maps. table.wpDataTable { table-layout: fixed !important; }table.wpDataTable td, table.wpDataTable th { white-space: normal !important; }.wpDataTablesWrapper .dataTables_filter {display: none !important;}table.wpDataTable td.numdata { text-align: right !important; }The post List of all mapping start-ups acquired by Apple appeared first on Geoawesomeness.