Apple opens Maps development center in Hyderabad, India

AppleInsider · May 19, 2016 4:41AM

Hot on the heels of revealing plans for an iOS app design and development facility in Bengaluru, Apple on Thursday local time announced the opening of an office in Hyderabad tasked with accelerating development of Maps products for iOS, Mac and Apple Watch.

WaveRock facilities in Hyderabad, India | Source: Tishman Speyer

The new development center will create up to 4,000 jobs, with employees set to work on Maps updates and new features to be applied to iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, the company said.

"Apple is focused on making the best products and services in the world and we are thrilled to open this new office in Hyderabad which will focus on Maps development," said Apple CEO Tim Cook. "The talent here in the local area is incredible and we are looking forward to expanding our relationships and introducing more universities and partners to our platforms as we scale our operations."

As detailed in a February report, Apple is taking up residence on the Waverock campus positioned in Hyderabad's tech corridor. At the time, reports claimed Apple was spending $25 million on the project, though the figure has not been confirmed.

As part of the announcement, Apple revealed that it supports more than 640,000 iOS app developer jobs and related positions in India.

On Tuesday, plans for an upcoming iOS design and development accelerator in Bengaluru were announced. When the facility opens in 2017, local developers will be able to hone their coding skills with the help of industry experts.

The pair of announcements come as Cook tours India, the second leg in a trip to Asia that began with a stop off in China. He is rumored to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi later this week.

blitz2 · May 19, 2016 9:58AM

All these announcements are shallower by the day.

"Talent here is incredible", "Our amazing new product", "These fantastic advances", ...

lonestar88 · May 19, 2016 11:39AM

blitz2 said:

All these announcements are shallower by the day.

"Talent here is incredible", "Our amazing new product", "These fantastic advances", ...

Funny how anyone could perceive the establishment and enhancement of the Apple developer economy in India as "shallower by the day." As if Tim is somehow obliged to divulge "deep" details of Apple's operations "by the day" so that you're properly entertained!

mindwaves · May 19, 2016 12:25PM

Uh, I hope that the Apple Maps team has some significant news now because they have more people. I always think of the Apple Maps team as two engineers locked in a room with one drone and 1 van.

My repeated requests to fix Apple Maps or to include suggestions has fallen on deaf ears. Outside of the US, Apple Maps is essentially useless when juxtaposed to Google Maps.

sanjeev.balaji · May 19, 2016 12:28PM

Once multi billion dollar Nokia used to pay 350 million per year to FoxConn.

Nokia failed to respond/react or take proactive steps to Apple advances ... Today Foxconn bought Nokia(part of) for 350 million.

Apple has to respond/react to advances by Android scale, capacity, availability.

I think Tim is on right track to speed up Maps and other projects which is critical in times where everything is data/location aware.

Business run on cash flow/burn, skill availability etc. Tim can't ignore available the talent, productivity of engineers in India at the same time reducing cost drastically to stay relevant in the fast changing world.

cnocbui · May 19, 2016 12:53PM

Apple not buying HERE maps when they could have, was not very bright, particularly in light of the relevance it would have had to Apple Maps, the Apple Car and now their investment in Didi.

cali · May 19, 2016 12:57PM

In reply above, it's sad really.

Apple built the foundation for everything android is based on. They worked hard and for years only for scumbags to steal the tech and make it cheaper and now Apple has to catch up to GoogMaps.

Had Apple known that patents were near worthless and Goggle were gonna backstab them, they would have started mapping at least by 2005.

rogifan_new · May 19, 2016 1:11PM

This announcement is for one reason: Apple needs to be able to sell refurbished iPhones in India. Gotta suck up to the government there.

loekf · May 19, 2016 1:22PM

cnocbui said:

Apple not buying HERE maps when they could have, was not very bright, particularly in light of the relevance it would have had to Apple Maps, the Apple Car and now their investment in Didi.

Apple Maps has been (partly) based on TomTom maps. There used to be two large commercial suppliers of GPS maps: Navteq and Teleatlas. Navteq was a Philips' daughter. Navteq was acquired by Nokia, Teleatlas by TomTom. Garmin these days still licences maps from Navteq. AFAIK, the big screw up at the beginning of Appe Maps was due to the conversion of TomTom data to Apple's internal format and adding meta data from various other sources. I hardly use it, still prefer Google maps. TomTom GO is my preferred GPS app in my car. Main reason for not using Apple's maps is the lack (it seems) of business info (shops etc). Nokia HERE is not bad as well, considering its free and offers pedestrian navigation. Great when you're on holiays in a strange city.

potatoleeksoup · May 19, 2016 1:40PM

This sounds great. Make use of overseas cash to improve global Apple Maps quality. Also appeal to India to get their protectionism minimized, and also make Apple products more appealing to their consumers since their countrymen would have a hand in its software.

ireland · May 19, 2016 2:17PM

Finally?

Over 3.5 years old and now they decide to beef up the Maps team? I've had some fixes fixed quite quick (you can guess where I am) and some quite dangerous turning directions I've reported three times that never get fixed. The only sensible explanation is Apple didn't have an enough employees to focus on Maps. This should have happened 18 months ago. Heck, if should have happened way sooner!

edited May 2016

waterrockets · May 19, 2016 2:22PM

cali said:

In reply above, it's sad really.

Apple built the foundation for everything android is based on. They worked hard and for years only for scumbags to steal the tech and make it cheaper and now Apple has to catch up to GoogMaps.

Had Apple known that patents were near worthless and Goggle were gonna backstab them, they would have started mapping at least by 2005.

This is a pretty tired argument. After the Palm Pilot in 1996, I can't believe it took ten years to evolve the touch and display tech and throw a phone in there. I thought Qualcomm was going to nail it, but Apple got there first. It's an obvious evolution of the Palm innovation. I had CS professors drawing out likely road maps to smartphones in 1996.

You can't blame Google for lack of innovation/execution on Apple Maps. I'm sure that Apple has learned that all good technology becomes a low-margin commodity. I don't understand why so many investors haven't learned it.

edited May 2016

ireland · May 19, 2016 2:23PM

mindwaves said:

My repeated requests to fix Apple Maps or to include suggestions has fallen on deaf ears. Outside of the US, Apple Maps is essentially useless when juxtaposed to Google Maps.

I hear you. Same here. I have seen several errors on Google Maps in Ireland too though. It pisses me off that it took Apple so long to make this push. It's one of the reasons Forstall was fired. It took too long. It is good news though. Thank God!

edited May 2016

bobschlob · May 19, 2016 2:47PM

You left a bunch of L's out of Tim's quote. It's, "We are thrilllllled..."

bobcat62 · May 19, 2016 3:47PM

If you thought Apple had quality control issues with their software, just wait until this facility comes online.

hjmnl · May 19, 2016 3:52PM

ireland said:

Finally?

Over 3.5 years old and now they decide to beef up the Maps team? I've had some fixes fixed quite quick (you can guess where I am) and some quite dangerous turning directions I've reported three times that never get fixed. The only sensible explanation is Apple didn't have an enough employees to focus on Maps. This should have happened 18 months ago. Heck, if should have happened way sooner!

I totally agree. They should invest more of their massive earnings to stay on top. Their map efforts are too little too late in my humble opinion. They should have flyovers from every major city in the world by now and public transits, etc. Sometimes I wonder how many programmers they have because when they introduce something compelling and new, they get leapfrogged by the competition the year ahead. Look at the state of Siri and many other software and services. Come on Apple, put more money in more programmers and be the best you once was.

cnocbui · May 19, 2016 4:10PM

loekf said:

cnocbui said:

Apple not buying HERE maps when they could have, was not very bright, particularly in light of the relevance it would have had to Apple Maps, the Apple Car and now their investment in Didi.

Apple Maps has been (partly) based on TomTom maps. There used to be two large commercial suppliers of GPS maps: Navteq and Teleatlas. Navteq was a Philips' daughter. Navteq was acquired by Nokia, Teleatlas by TomTom. Garmin these days still licences maps from Navteq. AFAIK, the big screw up at the beginning of Appe Maps was due to the conversion of TomTom data to Apple's internal format and adding meta data from various other sources. I hardly use it, still prefer Google maps. TomTom GO is my preferred GPS app in my car. Main reason for not using Apple's maps is the lack (it seems) of business info (shops etc). Nokia HERE is not bad as well, considering its free and offers pedestrian navigation. Great when you're on holiays in a strange city.

A while back, Apple announced they were going to build a data centre in Lisheenkyle, County Galway, here in Ireland. When I searched for it in Apple Maps, it drew a blank and couldn't find it. Perhaps someone at Apple read my post or more likely, someone at Apple tried to find it, couldn't, and was rather embarrased that they wouldn't even be able to find their own data centre, because now if you do the search it drops a pin ..... in the wrong place. I suppose near enough is good enough for Apple, though they might want to double check before they dig up and start building on some farmers field on the other side of the motorway.

Here is a screen shot from Here maps on my Nokia:

Image: http://forums.appleinsider.com/uploads/editor/tu/iaglgpj3frs6.jpg

Google Maps agrees with HERE on the placement, though even that doesn't have anything like the detail as to local place names. Apple maps still lacks any detail.

edited May 2016

isteelers · May 19, 2016 6:26PM

cnocbui said:

loekf said:

Apple Maps has been (partly) based on TomTom maps. There used to be two large commercial suppliers of GPS maps: Navteq and Teleatlas. Navteq was a Philips' daughter. Navteq was acquired by Nokia, Teleatlas by TomTom. Garmin these days still licences maps from Navteq. AFAIK, the big screw up at the beginning of Appe Maps was due to the conversion of TomTom data to Apple's internal format and adding meta data from various other sources. I hardly use it, still prefer Google maps. TomTom GO is my preferred GPS app in my car. Main reason for not using Apple's maps is the lack (it seems) of business info (shops etc). Nokia HERE is not bad as well, considering its free and offers pedestrian navigation. Great when you're on holiays in a strange city.

A while back, Apple announced they were going to build a data centre in Lisheenkyle, County Galway, here in Ireland. When I searched for it in Apple Maps, it drew a blank and couldn't find it. Perhaps someone at Apple read my post or more likely, someone at Apple tried to find it, couldn't, and was rather embarrased that they wouldn't even be able to find their own data centre, because now if you do the search it drops a pin ..... in the wrong place. I suppose near enough is good enough for Apple, though they might want to double check before they dig up and start building on some farmers field on the other side of the motorway.

Here is a screen shot from Here maps on my Nokia:

Google Maps agrees with HERE on the placement, though even that doesn't have anything like the detail as to local place names. Apple maps still lacks any detail.

I have had the opposite in my experience. Google maps took me the wrong way to a mysterious street that was a used car lot, whereas Apple maps took me to the correct location. Moral of the story, your mileage may vary but don't assume everyone has the same issues.

cnocbui · May 19, 2016 8:08PM

isteelers said:

I have had the opposite in my experience. Google maps took me the wrong way to a mysterious street that was a used car lot, whereas Apple maps took me to the correct location. Moral of the story, your mileage may vary but don't assume everyone has the same issues.

I was talking about HERE maps, not Google maps. I only mentioned Google maps in the context of supporting the HERE maps result.

flaneur · May 20, 2016 3:39AM

bobcat62 said:

If you thought Apple had quality control issues with their software, just wait until this facility comes online.

Don't know what you're implying here, probably some idiotic racial or cultural supremacy, but there's a new movie out for you to see called "The Man Who Knew Infinity." Look it up.

Indians are great in detail-oriented, objective fields — mathematics, programming, all the sciences, in general more competently than another nationality I could name closer to home.

edited May 2016

plankton · May 20, 2016 3:48AM

I hope the guys in Hyderabad or Bengaluru scrape some data for transit systems in Tokyo—it's the Olympics city for 2020 and we still have no transit directions in Maps!
And for the most part, flyover is a complete gimmick when trying to navigate a city. Spend the helicopter fees on rolling out street level mapping faster.

Apple opens Maps development center in Hyderabad, India

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