The latest casualty of Apple Inc’s war with Google Inc in the mobile-phone market is one of the most widely used features of the iPhone: maps.
New mapping software Apple is introducing this week with the iPhone 5 was criticized by technology gadget reviewers, who said it does not provide directions for public transportation and sometimes gets confused when navigating users.
“Apple believes that they can deliver a better experience for customers than Google,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. “But in the short term, Google has a better mapping application, and iPhone customers would suffer.”
Photo: Bloomberg
Apple, which is touting the map features as a key software change in the iPhone 5, built its navigation application amid a growing battle with Google, which had provided its Google Maps program since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Apple built the replacement app because it wanted to scale back its relationship with Google, not because of any product flaws, said two people familiar with Apple’s development of the mapping features.
The company’s rivalry with Google was born after the owner of the world’s largest Internet search engine developed the Android mobile operating system, which runs devices from manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics Co and HTC Corp (宏達電) that compete with Apple’s iPhone. Android is now the world’s most popular smartphone software.
The fallout from the feud extends beyond mapping. Customers also would not find Google’s YouTube application preinstalled on the iPhone for the first time since 2007. Google’s e-mail and document software have also not worked as well for iPhone customers as on Android phones, Rotman Epps said.
From a business perspective, Apple’s decision on mapping is important because its software ecosystem for providing music, apps and other services to customers helps to differentiate its products, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
“It doesn’t make sense for Apple to outsource a key part of their entire ecosystem to Google,” Gartenberg said.
Customers are not likely to find as much fault with the mapping features as the reviewers did, he said.
The reviews for the iPhone 5 were mostly positive, especially for its faster data speeds and lightweight body design. Walt Mossberg, the technology critic for the Wall Street Journal, called it the best smartphone on the market, while singling out the maps as a shortcoming.
“The biggest drawback I found is the new Maps app,” Mossberg wrote.
Bloomberg’s Rich Jaroslovsky also criticized the mapping features.
Customers have not shown any hesitation about adopting Apple’s new technology. Apple received more than 2 million orders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours, more than double the previous record set with the iPhone 4S last year.
“Mapping is probably the biggest weakness of iOS 6, but it’s still a relatively minor weakness,” Gartenberg said. “Two million customers have already said it’s not an issue.”
Under the companies’ arrangement starting with the first iPhone, Google provided Apple with mapping technology in exchange for data on the location of cell towers, Wi-Fi hotspots and where people were traveling, according to three people with knowledge of the relationship. Google used this data to make more accurate maps — by determining if a street is one-way, for example.
With its new effort to replace Google, Apple is using data provided by TomTom NV and OpenStreetMap. For the first time, Apple’s new mapping application features audio turn-by-turn navigation. Google, for its part, never let Apple include the turn-by-turn navigation feature in the version of Google Maps used on the iPhone.
As more people use the app, Apple will accumulate data that will help it improve the product.
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