Apple has clearly been busy buying companies to improve Apple Maps. Fresh off their purchase of Locationary early yesterday, AllThingsDigital is reporting that transit navigation service HopStop has also been acquired by Apple:
At last count, HopStop had two million monthly active users and launched a Waze-like service for reporting real-time delays and other information.
Founded in 2005, the company makes apps for both Apple and Android that cover more than 300 cities. In addition to public transit, it includes walking, biking and taxi options — basically, everything but driving yourself.
This is clearly an attempt to improve the transit services that Apple Maps provides. Currently you need an external app to navigate by transit (I personally use Transit for this purpose) to do this which is something that isn’t required by Google Maps. Thus Apple is clearly trying to close that gap. Expect more purchases like these as Apple gets serious about improving its Apple Maps product sooner rather than later.
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This entry was posted on July 20, 2013 at 11:16 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Apple Buys HopStop…. More Improvements For Apple Maps On The Way?
Apple has clearly been busy buying companies to improve Apple Maps. Fresh off their purchase of Locationary early yesterday, AllThingsDigital is reporting that transit navigation service HopStop has also been acquired by Apple:
At last count, HopStop had two million monthly active users and launched a Waze-like service for reporting real-time delays and other information.
Founded in 2005, the company makes apps for both Apple and Android that cover more than 300 cities. In addition to public transit, it includes walking, biking and taxi options — basically, everything but driving yourself.
This is clearly an attempt to improve the transit services that Apple Maps provides. Currently you need an external app to navigate by transit (I personally use Transit for this purpose) to do this which is something that isn’t required by Google Maps. Thus Apple is clearly trying to close that gap. Expect more purchases like these as Apple gets serious about improving its Apple Maps product sooner rather than later.
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This entry was posted on July 20, 2013 at 11:16 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.