Parveen Kaler

It’s been widely reported that Apple has acquired Placebase. (TechCrunch, TUAW).  Placebase is a mapping company that adds a layer of intelligence on top of map data.

Currently, Apple uses Google Maps for Maps.App on the iPhone.  A native Google Latitude client is not available for the iPhone.  There is some fuzziness as to whether Apple rejected the App or if Google decided to only support Google Latitude in the browser.

Let’s place this deal in context and take a look at the big picture.  We do know that Apple is building an internal Geo Team.  This team is most likely responsible for the UIMapKit framework, the Maps.App for the iPhone, and the Find My iPhone feature in MobileMe.

Let’s follow the money trail.  The big players in the space are Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft/Bing Maps, and MapQuest.

The first important piece of insight is that all of these big players get their mapping data from either NavTeq or from Tele Atlas.  The big players in the space don’t own the mapping data.  They provide a layer of intelligence on top of the data.

The second important piece of insight is that Navteq was acquired by Nokia.

This means that money travels from Apple’s coffers all the way to Nokia’s coffers each time an iPhone is sold.

There is no reason Apple couldn’t get map data directly from Navteq (or more likely Tele Atlas) and provide their own level of intelligence on top of this data.  I believe this deal is more about hedging against Nokia/Navteq than it is about Google.

Apple needs to differentiate against Nokia and Google Android devices as well as protect themselves from the rug being pulled out from under them.

I believe Apple is going to be aggressively adding features to MobileMe with Geo/Maps being one key facet.