Apple has silently snapped up Canadian mapping firm Poly9. The company previously supplied its cartographical smarts to Microsoft, Yahoo and the US Military. One of its most intriguing products is Poly9Globe, a browser-based spinning 3D globe that gives stats on your location and doesn’t need any additional software to run. Could Apple be planning to put that iPhone 4 gyroscope to good use? And could this be the next step towards its own Google Maps replacement? Here’s what we know so far…
According to a report in French Canadian paper Le Soleil, Apple has gobbled up Poly9 and moved its entire staff from Quebec to its base in Cupertino. Apple acquired another mapping firm, PlaceBase, last year.
Though Apple currently relies on Google for the iPhone Maps application, the growing rivalry between the firms has led to oodles of speculation about an own-brand Apple maps solution.
The products previously shown by Poly9 relied on a combination of maps from other sources to work including data from Google Earth and Google Maps. However, with PlaceBase, Apple got hold of its own source of maps to work with. Baking them together with Poly9’s 3D smarts could create a compelling alternative.
In Le Soleil’s article, Poly9’s staff are praised as “nimble ninjas of the Web”, so we could even see those smarts used for a future incarnation of MobileMe with an Apple maps service bolted on to it. With the battle between iPhone 4 and Android likely to get ever more fierce, it would certainly make sense for Apple to free itself from a reliance on Google.
Let us know: do you think Apple is sketching out its own maps app? And would it be right to move away from Google Maps?
Due TBC | £TBC | Apple (via Le Soleil/Apple Insider)
