Apple reportedly waived one year of Google Maps contract in switch to iOS Maps [u] - Page 4

You won't get clarification from anything more than more tabloid sources.

But you are right that the interpretations could be way off. Perhaps it's not as folks are reading it that Apple dropped Google Maps a year before the contract was up. But rather that they knew a year ago they were going to not renew etc and perhaps purposefully said nothing to Google to catch thm off guard. Which is stupidity on Googles part as they should have anticipated this the moment Apple bought the first company, like three years ago

"During the company's conference call, Google's new chief executive Larry Page noted a "run rate" of $2.5 billion in annual mobile revenues (income derived from Android, iOS, and other platforms), growth of about 2.5 times the company's 2010 mobile revenues, but a tiny fraction of the revenues Apple is generating as a hardware maker." (1)

"While Google's chief executive Larry Page recently described an $2.5 billion annual run rate for the company's mobile revenues, the company has testified that it has earned less than $550 million from Android across four years from 2008 to 2011." (2)

“Mobile ads associated with maps or locations are estimated to account for about 25% of the roughly $2.5 billion spent on mobile ads in 2012, according to Opus Research, up from 10% in 2010. That is expected to grow as the number of location-aware software apps grows." (3)


TLDR:

Google produces USD $2.5 bn annually in mobile revenues
80% of Google mobile revenues are (were) generated through Apple products
25% of Google mobile revenues are (were) generated specifically through the Maps app on the Apple iOS platform



I take issue with the idea that Google couldn't produce a credible third-party app given three months time. Given that Apple's new Maps app was announced on 11 June 2012 and released to the general public on 19 September 2012, Google should have had sufficient time to develop and submit a version of Google Maps to the iTunes App Store. Furthermore, I suggest that Google Maps may not be as robust as some claim considering that they either couldn't or didn't submit a third-party Google Maps app to the iTunes App Store.

You ask "what was Apple to do... And when is the best time to do it?" I suspect you may have misunderstood my post.


1. Daniel Eran Dilger. Published 13 October 2011. Google announces nearly $10 billion in quarterly revenue, little mention of Android. Apple Insider. Retrieved 26 September 2012.

2. Daniel Eran Dilger. Published 29 March 2012. Google earns 80% of its mobile revenue from iOS, just 20% from Android. Apple Insider. Retrieved 26 September 2012.

3. Jessica E. Vascellaro and Amir Efrati. Published 4 June 2012. Apple and Google Expand Their Battle to Mobile Maps. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 26 September 2012.

And even if it is, it wasn't when it came out like ten years ago.

You really think Apple is dumb enough to not verify reports before acting

 

You really are an irrational whiner, living in a delusional fantasy world. I don't really give a flying anything about your inner or outer struggles, or your irrational fears about software that you haven't even used. All this noise from you and you aren't even using the maps in question?

 

So, basically, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. You are simply in a panic, but have no facts or experience to justify it. Frankly, I don't think anyone wants you as a customer.

Neither does Tom Tom etc and they sorted something out

That's right. Sherlock wouldn't have solved the case using Google Maps, or Apple Maps.

Nasty cat fights on here.

If you keep iOS 5 with the original Google Maps App will it stop working if Apple's not paying a licensing fee anymore ?

Also since when is an App part of an OS in the first place?
Why wasn't this disclosed to the millions of users prior to installing that the old maps would be trashed and not merely an option?

If Google Maps was still there crowd sourcing wouldn't be nearly as effective; They had no choice. However they should've released it declaring it as a beta and informed everyone crowd sourcing would be needed for a while. If I was an exec I also would not have included Google Maps to ensure the quickest crowd sourcing possible. That's all regarding data only. With respect to the quality of the 3D maps etc that's a mystery I don't know anything about. 

If I'm the irrational party here, then how come you're the one making all the irrational assumptions? Who told you that I've never used iOS 6? I'm an iOS developer, I've used iOS 6 a lot longer than most people and downgraded back to 5.1.1 after 6 launched to the public because I don't need it on my devices anymore.


Right back at you! Stop speculating!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that iOS 6 Maps is also available in the Simulator, so even now I can still test it.
Edited by Vaelian - 9/26/12 at 6:31am

 

So I guess you ignored me the first time I posted this:

 

https://developers.google.com/maps/licensing

 

My citation is also known as common frigging sense. YOU are the product being sold. BUSINESSES are the customer.

 

 

I think they might do one more Android manufacturer lawsuit before going for the neck. They'll wait until the Samsung crap is completely settled, collect the money, and then see if anyone else is copying hardware as slavishly. If so, them first. If not, Google. 

 

 

Sounds like you have no business buying a smartphone, then. Sounds more like you need a standalone turn-by-turn GPS.

 

Thanks for clarifying your position here, though. It gives us some perspective in the future when you're complaining about one feature of a phone that has thousands.

Well this changes my opinion slightly, though not dramatically.

 

Maps on iPhone was certainly stagnant, and I am not sure who is responsible for that- Google or Apple (I blame Google), but it needed to move it forward.  It is very hard to move forward as dramatically as they did without upsetting people, especially when it comes to moving from mature software to something almost entirely new.

 

That said, I assumed the contract with Google was up and Apple didn't want to sign anything else.  I was 100% OK with that.  Now it just seems weird.  If Google was caught off guard (and I believe them because they had a YouTube app ready to go- it makes no sense to not have a maps alternative ready to go), it doesn't sound like there was much negotiation at all.  That kind of bugs me.  If Apple is going to start acting out of emotion, it makes me thankful that Google isn't involved in any other products on the iPhone.  I hope Apple returns to a level headed thinking after all the bad press this is causing.  I know they have a lot of hard feelings towards Google, Samsung, and others, but releasing something that isn't up to your standards because of those feelings disregards the reason people buy your products in the first place: quality.  I hopped on the Apple bandwagon because of those high quality standards.  Apple usually sticks to those standards even if it means leaving out a few bells and whistles, a quality I admire.  This move does not appear to be consistent with that at all, and that is bothersome (though not earth shattering).  

 

Keeping that all in mind- the bad press hasn't done much or anything to hurt sales.  People will forgive you when they think its a fluke, and we have every reason to believe this is a fluke given Apple's history. 

 

PS: I am still buying an iPhone 5. :-)

you are wrong sir.... i have used street view on google maps. ( on ios 5 of course)

the "person" icon had to be in the info blob... for street view to work. (on my ipad 3).

(great memories of look around brisbane, australia using street view. and being puzzled by the fact that the. google headquarters "employee" photo had the faces blurred out... come on if they didn't want people to see google employees' faces why allow them to pose on the road in front of google for google street level ?)

but, i dont care any more. apple will get their sh|t together, and all will be well.

funny, if 25% of the ios user base has upgraded, google is most definitely seeing a big drop in the traffic to the google maps server ... run google run and get that map app written, cause it is going to take at least a season to get it approved (wonder how google is going to get around the "Duplicates existing functionality" caveat in the approval process...)
so. good luck google you are now writing the map app as apple sees fit, thus it WILL have all the features and more, so that can't be said to "Duplicates existing functionality" ... and so Apple will get the app that the topline andriod phones have... great chess move/game on Apples part...

 

 

 

Edited by rednival - 9/26/12 at 7:41am

 

Apple introduced a translucent menu bar in Leopard(?) - take it or leave it. Much protesting from users. Next update to OS X there was an option from Apple to not have a translucent menu bar. Easy and an acknowledgment from Apple as to what should have been there the first time.

 

On iOS3, the slide switch on the iPad was rotation lock. In iOS4 Apple made it a sound mute switch and moved rotation lock to a more complex sequence. Much protesting from users. A later update to iOS provided an option to allow the user to decide on the function of the slider switch - mute or rotation lock. Easy and an acknowledgment from Apple as to what should have been there the first time.

 

Clearly, in these cases, users were right and Apple were wrong and by making those changes, conceded users' valid grievances. Apple makes mistakes, despite those on here who seem to think they are infallible and never put a foot wrong. Most of the time they do the sensible, inspired and often surprising thing. Sometimes changes are hard to accept but then we either forget the old way and/or realise that the new way is better. In (Mountain) Lion for example, you can use the trackpad to scroll in the old way or the new 'natural' way - on that one Apple did it perfectly by giving users an option from the start to choose their preference. I'm sure in time that option will go and nobody will mind.

 

Thinking that contributors here can't criticise Apple's decisions because none of us are Apple's management team is rather like saying that the government can't be critiqued by the voters because none of us are politicians or political graduates. Politicians make mistakes, presidents get impeached and our governments and businesses lie too! Our arguments may need refining, we may lack all the right knowledge and sometimes we are wrong but we are perfectly entitled to offer our views of what we think is incorrect, unhelpful as well as on what really works too.

Am I the only one who things the media is over-dramatizing the whole maps thing? Just nit-picking and LOOKING to find serious fault in Apple for anything? They are making it sound as it Apple new maps is a "Disaster" as some have put it. are there mistakes? yes. Bugs? yes. but I see the majority of them are not that big a deal for a new product. 3D renderings of a hwy going through Hoover Dam, an airport icon over Airfield Ireland. That ONE street in your town that is mislabeled. Seems to me that for the most part, these errors are obvious and MANY of them should be common sense. I am sure that if the critics took as much time to look for errors in Google's own mapping system, they'd find some.

Apple maps aren't perfect by any means, and I hope none of those errors will cause anyone any harm, but it's pretty darn good in MOST areas (mine included... I live in a fairly large city in the US and so far, it's pretty damn accurate). Just use common sense, submit any errors you find and I'm sure in no time we'll have a GREAT product. Remember, the first iPhone wasn't great either (remember the no MMS, copy/paste and stuff?)

In the meantime, if you aren't certain of an area, or if it's something vital, use the google maps webapp for confirmation.

I guess I forgot to consider that someone with your attitude wouldn't have any friends who would let them look at their phones. :-/


But you said that the ONLY reason you used a smartphone was for Maps. Since the Google Maps program on Android is better than on iOS (which is part of the reason Apple developed their own), a rational person would be using an Android phone.

That leads us to one of the following conclusions:

1. You're not a rational person
2. You're lying.

Frankly, I consider the second to be more likely - especially since in another post you said that you are an iOS developer. So the only thing you use a smartphone for is Mapping, but you're an iOS developer? Clearly, your testimony can not be considered to be truthful.

For starters, I asked for a citation (you're replying with speculation, which I can do, too), and secondly Apple isn't gathering or processing that data, they're displaying it to users in a convenient way, just like Google does through the browser. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Google would charge Apple for a service that they provide for free, quite the opposite actually, as Google regards users as assets to their advertisement core business, rather than clients.
 
Citation?

Most major carriers, at least here in the US, allow you 15 or 30 days to try out your phone and return it for a different model. I know AT&T does this as I've done it in the past. They may not let you take out "several" at a time (unless you register for multiple phone numbers), but you can definitely test out an Android phone if you'd like. But I'm sure there will be some parts of that that you dislike as well. No phone, no company is perfect, but you need to get the one that is closest to perfect for you.

 

HEY. LISTEN.

 

https://developers.google.com/maps/licensing

 

Notice the terms. Now, unless you think that the sum total of all iOS devices registers fewer than 2,500 hits to Google Maps per day, Apple is paying for a license. Period.

 

Please don't be in business… please don't be in business… please don't be in business… 

Yes, I choose my relationships based on people's cell phones.


In one hand I had a device that I fully tested; in the other hand I had plenty of devices that I had no access to in order to test, so naturally I chose the device that I was certain to have all the functionality that I wanted. What is there so irrational about it? I'm not gullible, you telling me that device A does more than device B does not necessarily make it true; some people value things that others don't give a shit a bout, and this thread shows exactly that.


I became a developer because I bought the phone, not the other way around, and there's a pretty big difference between having a smartphone that I only use for development (I also have an iPad that I only use for that reason alone) and carrying a smartphone on the street which is useful to me as a GPS device.

 

Your statements are contradictory and make no sense taken together. Frankly, I think you're full of it. I don't believe you are an iOS developer for whom the only reason you have a smartphone is for maps. That's just a ridiculous combination of statements. There's no need to speculate, you are obviously trying to cover your inconsistent statements that show you are are just making stuff up as you go along. That's the thing when you aren't being candid, it's so easy to trip yourself up and hard to keep track of everything you've said.

 

Sorry, your credibility here is shot. Time to find a new site to spew your venom on.

 

It's not the media. It's us, Apple users. I'll be very happy to switch to IOS Maps, because Apple products are always higher quality than the competitors, but I'll do it when it's ready. In the meantime, don't force us to travel back in time losing the features we were used to, specially when you could very easily keep Google Maps while you were polishing IOS Maps. On every forums I visit, I don't see the media over-dramatizing, I just see Apple users who disagree with recent Apple policies.

 

You don't visit many forums, then. And they're not all Apple users complaining.

They make no sense to you because you're confusing cause and effect, which is an informal logic fallacy. I became a developer because I bought an iPhone, not the other way around; and I bought an iPhone specifically because of Google Maps. I'm a geek, that shit happens, I buy tech and feel the need to tinker with it, there isn't much else to read into.

 

You seem to divert the discussion ...

But never mind: I expect Apple to release security updates for older versions of iOS, like they do for OS X.

 

You still don't seem to understand the point I made in my previous post: it's not about you, it's about Apple and all it's customers now and in the future. 

 

J.

And replace it (for the next year) with some even worse? That makes a great deal of sense. Google's "mediocrity" vs Our Own "worse than mediocrity" Sheesh.

 

Sorry, putting aside all the back and forth that goes on here, I don't see how anyone can say this was a wise decision.

He never said ALL Apple users were complaining...those are your words, not his.

Apple has never released updates to previous versions of iOS, as far as I know, so they are unlikely to start doing that now (the difference is that the major upgrades are free whereas OS X's are paid).

My argument was from the perspective of the customer. I do not have to care about Apple's internal or external struggles; they're sacrificing my experience as a customer for what to me are petty reasons, and they don't seem to care much about it either, otherwise they'd have made a public statement about what drove them to this decision.

 

Nor did I. Speaking of my words, read them again.

 

Sorry, still not buying your tale. I don't think anyone else is either at this point. Wish you better luck somewhere else with your Android phone.

 

And, by the way, your argument above, in your first sentence, depends on the Fallicist's Fallacy.

Ok, someone @ Apple made a bad decision (probably with TC's approval).  So what.  iphone5 still sells more than 4s in the first weekend.  people still upgrading to iOS6.  There was no effect as having a bad map app.  Yes, people whine about it.  But that doesn't affect anything.  Come on, people will buy any phone Apple puts out regardless of what's on there.  This proves the case.

 

Nope. Try again.

Well, no. I simply accepted your statements as if they were true. That clearly was a mistake.

You said that the only thing you use a smartphone for is maps. Then you later said that you are an iOS developer (which presumably means that you use your phone at least for testing your own apps).

The two statements are not consistent.

You don't have to "buy into" anything I say because I've already defeated the whole argument earlier. Even if I was lying, the Maps app is available for testing in the iOS Smiluator, which is now available for everyone as part of Xcode 4.5 which has been released to public, so I'd never be required to use iOS 6 in my devices in order to test Maps. The whole claim that I'm talking about something that I don't know has been invalidated long ago, and you can't prove that I'm lying either.

 

I think the only argument defeated here is yours, which has gone down in spectacular flames, after you lost track of what you had said, then waved your hands frantically to distract from your self-contradictory nonsense. And, shouldn't that be, "Even if I were lying..." if you haven't been? Oh, I get it.

Except the latter wouldn't have happened without the former, and if I am rendered unable to use GPS on my phone, I will lose interest in developing for it, too. Is it that hard to comprehend?

You get what? That I don't care whether you believe me or not? That's true, I don't, because it's not relevant to the debate. Don't try kindergarten psychology on an emotionally detached person, I'm not motivated by the same things normal people are.

And to think I was being called irrational earlier...

 

At this point wouldnt be easier to try a third party app?     There are some inexpensive ones out there.

I takes a long time for me to trust a mapping app. My trust in Google Maps did not come overnight, as I mentioned earlier in the thread.