There is no doubt that Apple is trying very hard to match or improve the Maps service in the face of its users and incidentally compete a little more face to face with Google Maps, its eternal rival.
On this occasion, the company has paid up to $ 30 million for a start-up located in San Francisco called Mapsense, which is made up of just 12 people who specialize in analyzing location data in visualizations, according to reports.
An Apple spokesperson speaking to Re / Code said:
Apple buys smaller tech companies from time to time and we usually don't discuss the purpose of their acquisition
On the other hand Mapsense wants to achieve a complete integration of "connected" maps
There are more than 10 billion devices on the planet that use streaming data for their geo-location on a daily database […] In this way, the collection of positioning data is increasingly complicated, the traditional tools to visualize understanding and leveraging this fact have been hampered by the speed and scale of this huge and complex new and growing data source
This means that it is better that if the user is the one who provides the data instead of downloading it, the platform will will offer the map "adjusted" to your needs.
This could be a move to create a proprietary database With information contained in its Maps application, without going any further yesterday with the launch of iOS 9, an update of this application has been carried out, with new features on public transport information although it continues to use data from third companies such as TomTom and others, according to the application itself.
As we already know, Apple is a company that is characterized by trying to offer its own services without depending on third parties as far as possible and although Maps have come a long way in this regard, it is still too early to let go of the hand of «the elderly».