The problem with buying a map company is the cost of keeping the data up to date.
I doubt the Audi, BMW or Daimler will pay or bother to update it.
There's always a way. They can give good licensing deal to 3rd party for regular updates. Windows 10 Maps app is using Here tech in a background - obviously MS has long term interest in this, if noone else.
Either way... I'd really doubt that brands like Audi, Merc and BMW would allow to damage their image with utterly outdated maps.
am amused by some forum poster boys when they say how much damage can be done to car manufacturers by great Apple leader. Few of them are probably so young that do not recall it was called FUD spread by Microsoft long time ago. It is time to note that some of you act just the same as former Microsoft pundits.
For your information Apple may get slapped with billion dollar penalties imposed by department of justice in many places in this world if it acts in predatory way. There are anti-trust regulations in place. Monopolistic and predatory actions do not pay off.
Anyway Apple has no expertise in automotive industry whatsoever and BMW has vast development knowledge and quality a bit higher than Apple in my opinion. So what is your point? That it could be destroyed by green novice in this league? Some must be very ignorant about this.
Apple could have bought Skype for under $3 billion when eBay decided to sell it. Apple was no doubt, working on FaceTime, and voice calling back then. This would have gotten them the biggest calling software in the world, and Microsoft would, again, have needed to develop it from scratch, and we know what that means.
Thank god they didn't buy Skype. It's terrible. FaceTime hardly ever drops by comparison, and the quality of image is better.
I use both quite a bit, and truth be told, I find myself reverting to Skype when I have the choice.
am amused by some forum poster boys when they say how much damage can be done to car manufacturers by great Apple leader. Few of them are probably so young that do not recall it was called FUD spread by Microsoft long time ago. It is time to note that some of you act just the same as former Microsoft pundits.
For your information Apple may get slapped with billion dollar penalties imposed by department of justice in many places in this world if it acts in predatory way. There are anti-trust regulations in place. Monopolistic and predatory actions do not pay off.
Anyway Apple has no expertise in automotive industry whatsoever and BMW has vast development knowledge and quality a bit higher than Apple in my opinion. So what is your point? That it could be destroyed by green novice in this league? Some must be very ignorant about this.
Here Maps and directions I find to be quite superb. The killer feature none of the others can touch is the entire ecosystem can function offline without the need for any data connection or phone signal, even for POI stuff. The Maps, associated data and most of the POI stuff can be downloaded and saved on the phone as entire sets for countries, or if they are large, individual regions within. With a data connection, the data is detailed down to the point of giving you floor plans of shopping centers/malls including the location and names of the shops contained within. Same goes for airport terminals and College campus maps down to the location of departments. You can even look in detail at an area while online via WiFi, go offline and the detailed data will be cached.
Why do you consider the perishability of the data an issue for Here Maps and not Apple Maps? Having to maintain the currency of data is a given, like buying petrol for a car. It's not a negative, it's just in the nature of the beast.
Somewhat better data? Lol!
You might have seen articles mentioning Apple plans to build a major data centre near Galway, here in Ireland. Try finding the location mentioned - Lisheenkyle - on Apple Maps. Here is the difference between Here and Apple Maps:
And that's with Apple Maps having a data connection and Here Maps offline. Multiply that sort of difference worldwide. Here Maps is worth its $3 Billion, Beats wasn't.
Quite impressed with Here! Drive here in New Zealand. We are at the end of the world and small, sparsely populated country... hardly a priority for mapping. It shows in Here! Maps - no street views for any city (to my knowledge), and even satellite/areal view is mostly limited to low res, blurry, low contrast images. But Here! Drive... offline is big deal because there are many locations around with poor or no coverage. Also, system is quite accurate on this level - only once in the last 2 years (since I'm using it) it insisted that I should drive road-toll route because it could not find free route. Since I knew there is one (and very common at that) and went that way, it re-routed quickly. Also - speed warning is spot on, I think it never failed to warn speed change within very tight distance from actual road sign, I'd say within a car or two lengths.
I use both quite a bit, and truth be told, I find myself reverting to Skype when I have the choice.
Yeah me too. Skype is cross platform. A lot of my friends are Mac people but most of my business associates are on Windows. I'm sure many of them have iPhones, but I only have their Skype name not their Apple name. Skype is just easier since it is messaging, video, file sharing, email, voicemail and audio all in one app. I find the quality to be excellent. The first iOS version was complete garbage but since Microsoft took over it has been rock solid in my experience.
I use both quite a bit, and truth be told, I find myself reverting to Skype when I have the choice.
Yeah me too. Skype is cross platform. A lot of my friends are Mac people but most of my business associates are on Windows. I'm sure many of them have iPhones, but I only have their Skype name not their Apple name. Skype is just easier since it is messaging, video, file sharing, email, voicemail and audio all in one app. I find the quality to be excellent. The first iOS version was complete garbage but since Microsoft took over it has been rock solid in my experience.
All of that, and the ability to do group video chats as well.
Typical of Apple networking (and networked) products, they give us a great service that does 70% of the stuff very well, and leave us hanging for the rest.
Something is going on with in car maps, at least for BMW. I purchased a new BMW last November with extra internet services. I could log in on my computer at home or office, then using the BMW site, search a location on a map and send it to my car. The car has a SIM chip built in. The location would then appear in my car's stat nav. A few months ago BMW stopped offering this service. When I enquired, I was informed by BMW that I could now use Google Maps instead as apparently "it was more popular". I don't find Google as good as BMW's previous system. I thought this might be a cost saving exercise but now BMW are part of a group spending billions on a mapping system. So much for what they said to me that Google maps are more popular with their customers. If that was true, why buy another mapping system?
Something is going on with in car maps, at least for BMW. I purchased a new BMW last November with extra internet services. I could log in on my computer at home or office, then using the BMW site, search a location on a map and send it to my car. The car has a SIM chip built in. The location would then appear in my car's stat nav. A few months ago BMW stopped offering this service. When I enquired, I was informed by BMW that I could now use Google Maps instead as apparently "it was more popular". I don't find Google as good as BMW's previous system. I thought this might be a cost saving exercise but now BMW are part of a group spending billions on a mapping system. So much for what they said to me that Google maps are more popular with their customers. If that was true, why buy another mapping system?
Maybe because the system you describe requires a mobile data connection and many models might not get the feature and many owners might not want the added expense of a mobile data plan just for their car.
Often special tech platforms get bought just to keep it out of the hands of other companies. The German cars makers don't want to be held hostage by the likes of Google and Apple so they had to buy it.
But CarPlay is like the Apple Watch. You need an iPhone for it to work. The auto companies can't require people to have a certain phone for their navigation to work. It is okay for it to work with CarPlay but I doubt they'll ever make a luxury car that doesn't have a stand alone nav system as well. Personally I don't like the idea of downloading map tiles over the cell network so for me the stand alone system is better in some ways. With cell connection you are using up your data plan and you have to take your phone out of your pocket and plug it in, otherwise you will kill your battery with all the wireless traffic.
Maintenance for stand alone maps is an ongoing expense though because the data is only good for about 3 years, but that is how often I usually buy new cars anyway.
Aftermarket has this sorted out -
Pioneer ships a radio with GPS and maps on a phone (any Android or iOS phone) and works with offline maps. But can also do CarPlay. It's not perfect by any stretch, but there's no reason car companies can't do this.
Also: every three years? That's pretty extreme. Most people are keeping cars longer and longer these days.
When I think of all the things Apple could have done, but didn't, I feel ill.
They could have bought this company in 2005, well before Nokia bought it. By then, Apple must have known they would have a mapping app. It went for something less than $3 billion when Nokia did buy it. Apple would never have needed to depend on Google for maps, and then on Tom Tom. And people need to remember that Google's mapping wasn't incredible back then.
When Apple first began working on Siri, they had a chance to buy Nuance. Back then the company was worth around $4 billion, Apple could have bought it for $6 billion. Seems like a lot, but Apple depends on this for Siri. But then, so does Google and Microsoft. Neither could have come up with rivals to Siri without this. Yes, they could have started from scratch, but that alone would have taken years. They might not be ready yet, and it wouldn't be nearly as good. Another error on Apple's part.
Apple could have bought Skype for under $3 billion when eBay decided to sell it. Apple was no doubt, working on FaceTime, and voice calling back then. This would have gotten them the biggest calling software in the world, and Microsoft would, again, have needed to develop it from scratch, and we know what that means.
There are other smaller companies that Apple could have bought. They bought most advanced touch sensor company, but they could have bought the second as well. That would still leave several small, not nearly as advanced companies around. But this would have prevented Samsung from having a touch sensor this year, and likely would have made them wait for at least one year, and likely two, from the progress I see from those other smaller companies. Just a couple hundred million would have done it.
I could list three or four more, but I'll just mention one that would have been world changing.
Before Google decided to go public, they put themselves on sale for about $5 billion. At the time, they, and Apple were very close, and they asked Apple if they were interested, as usual, Apple said no. We can play the "what if" game here, but really, what if?
Nokia bought "Here" ("Navteq" at the time) for $ 8.1 billion not for $ 3 billion.
I no longer drive, so I haven't used Here on a mobile device.
I admit the offline capability is an advantage. The online detail you mention is one place that I believe Apple is implementing -- with a priority that will yield the most ROI to Apple (hardware sales, advertising sales, etc.)
I did say, that I saw no reason that Apple couldn't contract Here data if needed.
I didn't say perishability was not an issue for Apple Maps. Apparently the cost of continuous remapping was an issue for Nokia -- causing them to sell Here Maps at a significant loss after several years. It remains to be seen if the new owners are willing to spend what is needed to maintain the maps.
I don't believe Apple thought Here maps was worth $3 Billion to Apple. The $3 Billion Beats deal provides Apple an entree into Expertise, Insider Connections, Access to Creatives, Hardware, Curation, Broadcasting/Streaming -- where they [appparently] see a significant business opportunity. It will take some time for that to be proven right or wrong.
As I see it, Apple loses nothing by not acquiring Here -- and stands to gain quite a bit by acquiring Beats ...
Timing is everything!
Apple loses, because they're still stuck with TomTom. And Apple has been spending hundreds of millions fixing errors from them, as well as adding much more mapping information that TomTom itself doesn't have, why pay another company so much per year to license their stuff, when you've got to spend so much more to fix it and add the rest they don't have? I'd rather buy my own company, and work to add to that. It would totally be under my control. TomTom is not under Apple's control.
I am not sure automakers are good stewards for a company like this!
It depends. If they do what I think they're going to do, then it will be a separate organization that will be funded by them, and offer the information to all these companies that bought it. This could work out really well for them. These are really big companies, and can afford, particularly together, to spend whatever they need to to keep this working well.
am amused by some forum poster boys when they say how much damage can be done to car manufacturers by great Apple leader. Few of them are probably so young that do not recall it was called FUD spread by Microsoft long time ago. It is time to note that some of you act just the same as former Microsoft pundits.
For your information Apple may get slapped with billion dollar penalties imposed by department of justice in many places in this world if it acts in predatory way. There are anti-trust regulations in place. Monopolistic and predatory actions do not pay off.
Anyway Apple has no expertise in automotive industry whatsoever and BMW has vast development knowledge and quality a bit higher than Apple in my opinion. So what is your point? That it could be destroyed by green novice in this league? Some must be very ignorant about this.
Reading your post has me thinking that you're pretty ignorant. Apple is bigger than most auto companies, and makes vastly more profit. It's naive to think that experience can't be bought. If you'd pay attention to the way Apple does things, you'd know that Apple doesn't build their own factories. They have the largest companies with the experience build their products, though Apple often does design, and have built, the machinery to do the work. They apparently have a lot of experience in doing that.
So when we read about Apple and BMW, we see that Apple is interested in partnering with a high quality manufacturer. In fact, there are several companies in Europe that manufacture high quality cars for smaller "manufacturers". They have announced, publicly, that they would be happy to work with Apple on a car.
And Apple just bought another 42 acres of land, this time in San Jose. They can build another 2.8 million feet of building floor space there. That's right across the street from where they just took out a lease on 300,000 more feet.
The penalties thing is just FUD. Most of that isn't even legit.
In 2005 Navteq's market value was around $4B. I doubt Apple could have purchased them for $3B. Maybe you're thinking of TeleAtlas? That would make more sense.
IMO they probably could have purchased TeleAtlas in 2005 and for a lot less than $3B. Even TomTom thought they were worth less than that even in 2007. But the Navteq sale to Nokia and Garmin jumping in the bidding for TeleAtlas (likely bluffing) pushed TT to pay a whole lot more, north of $4B by the time it was over. That was almost twice what TomTom originally was prepared to pay for them.
Comments
There's always a way. They can give good licensing deal to 3rd party for regular updates. Windows 10 Maps app is using Here tech in a background - obviously MS has long term interest in this, if noone else.
Either way... I'd really doubt that brands like Audi, Merc and BMW would allow to damage their image with utterly outdated maps.
am amused by some forum poster boys when they say how much damage can be done to car manufacturers by great Apple leader. Few of them are probably so young that do not recall it was called FUD spread by Microsoft long time ago. It is time to note that some of you act just the same as former Microsoft pundits.
For your information Apple may get slapped with billion dollar penalties imposed by department of justice in many places in this world if it acts in predatory way. There are anti-trust regulations in place. Monopolistic and predatory actions do not pay off.
Anyway Apple has no expertise in automotive industry whatsoever and BMW has vast development knowledge and quality a bit higher than Apple in my opinion. So what is your point? That it could be destroyed by green novice in this league? Some must be very ignorant about this.
I use both quite a bit, and truth be told, I find myself reverting to Skype when I have the choice.
Thanks for the gobbledegook.
Quite impressed with Here! Drive here in New Zealand. We are at the end of the world and small, sparsely populated country... hardly a priority for mapping. It shows in Here! Maps - no street views for any city (to my knowledge), and even satellite/areal view is mostly limited to low res, blurry, low contrast images. But Here! Drive... offline is big deal because there are many locations around with poor or no coverage. Also, system is quite accurate on this level - only once in the last 2 years (since I'm using it) it insisted that I should drive road-toll route because it could not find free route. Since I knew there is one (and very common at that) and went that way, it re-routed quickly. Also - speed warning is spot on, I think it never failed to warn speed change within very tight distance from actual road sign, I'd say within a car or two lengths.
I use both quite a bit, and truth be told, I find myself reverting to Skype when I have the choice.
Yeah me too. Skype is cross platform. A lot of my friends are Mac people but most of my business associates are on Windows. I'm sure many of them have iPhones, but I only have their Skype name not their Apple name. Skype is just easier since it is messaging, video, file sharing, email, voicemail and audio all in one app. I find the quality to be excellent. The first iOS version was complete garbage but since Microsoft took over it has been rock solid in my experience.
All of that, and the ability to do group video chats as well.
Typical of Apple networking (and networked) products, they give us a great service that does 70% of the stuff very well, and leave us hanging for the rest.
Something is going on with in car maps, at least for BMW. I purchased a new BMW last November with extra internet services. I could log in on my computer at home or office, then using the BMW site, search a location on a map and send it to my car. The car has a SIM chip built in. The location would then appear in my car's stat nav. A few months ago BMW stopped offering this service. When I enquired, I was informed by BMW that I could now use Google Maps instead as apparently "it was more popular". I don't find Google as good as BMW's previous system. I thought this might be a cost saving exercise but now BMW are part of a group spending billions on a mapping system. So much for what they said to me that Google maps are more popular with their customers. If that was true, why buy another mapping system?
Something is going on with in car maps, at least for BMW. I purchased a new BMW last November with extra internet services. I could log in on my computer at home or office, then using the BMW site, search a location on a map and send it to my car. The car has a SIM chip built in. The location would then appear in my car's stat nav. A few months ago BMW stopped offering this service. When I enquired, I was informed by BMW that I could now use Google Maps instead as apparently "it was more popular". I don't find Google as good as BMW's previous system. I thought this might be a cost saving exercise but now BMW are part of a group spending billions on a mapping system. So much for what they said to me that Google maps are more popular with their customers. If that was true, why buy another mapping system?
Maybe because the system you describe requires a mobile data connection and many models might not get the feature and many owners might not want the added expense of a mobile data plan just for their car.
Often special tech platforms get bought just to keep it out of the hands of other companies. The German cars makers don't want to be held hostage by the likes of Google and Apple so they had to buy it.
But CarPlay is like the Apple Watch. You need an iPhone for it to work. The auto companies can't require people to have a certain phone for their navigation to work. It is okay for it to work with CarPlay but I doubt they'll ever make a luxury car that doesn't have a stand alone nav system as well. Personally I don't like the idea of downloading map tiles over the cell network so for me the stand alone system is better in some ways. With cell connection you are using up your data plan and you have to take your phone out of your pocket and plug it in, otherwise you will kill your battery with all the wireless traffic.
Maintenance for stand alone maps is an ongoing expense though because the data is only good for about 3 years, but that is how often I usually buy new cars anyway.
Aftermarket has this sorted out -
Pioneer ships a radio with GPS and maps on a phone (any Android or iOS phone) and works with offline maps. But can also do CarPlay. It's not perfect by any stretch, but there's no reason car companies can't do this.
Also: every three years? That's pretty extreme. Most people are keeping cars longer and longer these days.
When I think of all the things Apple could have done, but didn't, I feel ill.
They could have bought this company in 2005, well before Nokia bought it. By then, Apple must have known they would have a mapping app. It went for something less than $3 billion when Nokia did buy it. Apple would never have needed to depend on Google for maps, and then on Tom Tom. And people need to remember that Google's mapping wasn't incredible back then.
When Apple first began working on Siri, they had a chance to buy Nuance. Back then the company was worth around $4 billion, Apple could have bought it for $6 billion. Seems like a lot, but Apple depends on this for Siri. But then, so does Google and Microsoft. Neither could have come up with rivals to Siri without this. Yes, they could have started from scratch, but that alone would have taken years. They might not be ready yet, and it wouldn't be nearly as good. Another error on Apple's part.
Apple could have bought Skype for under $3 billion when eBay decided to sell it. Apple was no doubt, working on FaceTime, and voice calling back then. This would have gotten them the biggest calling software in the world, and Microsoft would, again, have needed to develop it from scratch, and we know what that means.
There are other smaller companies that Apple could have bought. They bought most advanced touch sensor company, but they could have bought the second as well. That would still leave several small, not nearly as advanced companies around. But this would have prevented Samsung from having a touch sensor this year, and likely would have made them wait for at least one year, and likely two, from the progress I see from those other smaller companies. Just a couple hundred million would have done it.
I could list three or four more, but I'll just mention one that would have been world changing.
Before Google decided to go public, they put themselves on sale for about $5 billion. At the time, they, and Apple were very close, and they asked Apple if they were interested, as usual, Apple said no. We can play the "what if" game here, but really, what if?
Nokia bought "Here" ("Navteq" at the time) for $ 8.1 billion not for $ 3 billion.
Who do they use then. They don't have in house capability for this. I know that for certain.
Well, that's Skype as it is, now. If Apple had bought it years ago, it would be very different. You can't compare the two.
Apple loses, because they're still stuck with TomTom. And Apple has been spending hundreds of millions fixing errors from them, as well as adding much more mapping information that TomTom itself doesn't have, why pay another company so much per year to license their stuff, when you've got to spend so much more to fix it and add the rest they don't have? I'd rather buy my own company, and work to add to that. It would totally be under my control. TomTom is not under Apple's control.
It depends. If they do what I think they're going to do, then it will be a separate organization that will be funded by them, and offer the information to all these companies that bought it. This could work out really well for them. These are really big companies, and can afford, particularly together, to spend whatever they need to to keep this working well.
Reading your post has me thinking that you're pretty ignorant. Apple is bigger than most auto companies, and makes vastly more profit. It's naive to think that experience can't be bought. If you'd pay attention to the way Apple does things, you'd know that Apple doesn't build their own factories. They have the largest companies with the experience build their products, though Apple often does design, and have built, the machinery to do the work. They apparently have a lot of experience in doing that.
So when we read about Apple and BMW, we see that Apple is interested in partnering with a high quality manufacturer. In fact, there are several companies in Europe that manufacture high quality cars for smaller "manufacturers". They have announced, publicly, that they would be happy to work with Apple on a car.
And Apple just bought another 42 acres of land, this time in San Jose. They can build another 2.8 million feet of building floor space there. That's right across the street from where they just took out a lease on 300,000 more feet.
The penalties thing is just FUD. Most of that isn't even legit.
This was well before that.
IMO they probably could have purchased TeleAtlas in 2005 and for a lot less than $3B. Even TomTom thought they were worth less than that even in 2007. But the Navteq sale to Nokia and Garmin jumping in the bidding for TeleAtlas (likely bluffing) pushed TT to pay a whole lot more, north of $4B by the time it was over. That was almost twice what TomTom originally was prepared to pay for them.
I'd need some evidence of that.