May have to wait for iOS 6

Legal disclaimers in iOS 5 appear to support the idea that Apple has been developing its own custom mapping technology. The beta firmware has a set of new "Map Data" disclaimers, separate from those belonging to Google. While both listings mention third-party companies, many of the ones under Map Data are not associated with Google. A key example is Waze, which does real-time mapping and traffic information using crowd-sourced data, but has had to compete with Google Maps.

Another firm, Urban Mapping, does neighborhood data not seen in Maps, such as demographics, economics, crime and school performance. Some other companies mentioned under Map Data include CoreLogic (property boundaries), Getchee (location and market data for China, India and southeast Asia), Increment P (location and traffic data in Japan), Localeze (business listings), MapData Sciences (maps for Australia and New Zealand), DMTI (Canadian postal codes) and TomTom. TomTom supplies TeleAtlas mapping information, which Google licenses as well.

Urban Mapping was at one point a partner of Placebase, which Apple has since acquired along with another mapping-related company, Poly9. Waze may be playing an instrumental role in Apple's announced plans for a crowd-sourced traffic database. Apple has however recently renewed a mapping agreement with Google, which may mean that any custom mapping technology will have to wait for iOS 6.

by MacNN Staff