Apple and Google Expand Their Battle to Mobile Maps

The battle between the two tech heavy weight giants Apple and Google is ready to begin a new chapter.  This time the fight is over the lucrative mobile map.  According to Apple sources, the company is planning on dumping the pre-loaded Google mapping technology in lieu of it's own new mapping app.  Google maps are a large driver of web traffic to Google's site


Additional details via WSJ article here

• Apple has been hatching the plan to evict Google Maps from the iPhone for years, according to current and former Apple employees. The plan accelerated as smartphones powered by Google's Android software overtook the iPhone in shipments
• .Apple has quietly acquired at least three cutting-edge map companies, melding their technology with its own. Last fall, Apple took a first step in developing a proprietary mapping service with the virtually unnoticed release of a "geocoder"—the brains behind a mapping app that translates a phone's longitude and latitude into a point on a map, like an address. Before that, it relied on Google's geocoder.
• 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.
• But more than ad revenue, Apple is going after the map market to have more control over a key asset in the widening smartphone war. Google Maps is used by more than 90% of U.S. iPhone users. So Apple believes controlling the mapping experience and offering features that Google doesn't have can help sell more devices and entice developers to build unique apps for iPhone users.

Google's Eric Schmidt, left, and Apple's Steve Jobs, right, in 2008. The relationship deteriorated as their companies competed.

• For years, Apple and Google were models of cooperation. Each largely stuck to its separate world—Apple made computers and other hardware; Google offered Web search and sold online ads. Apple's longtime chief, Steve Jobs, had close relations with Google chief Eric Schmidt, who sat on Apple's board of directors from 2006 until 2009.
• The rise of the iPhone and other smartphones changed all that. Mr. Jobs felt blindsided by Google's push into mobile devices with its own Android operating system. Google has since entered the hardware business directly, buying Motorola Mobility Holdings, which makes phones. Google recently also launched a music, movie, book and mobile-app store to compete with Apple's iTunes. Android-phone shipments now surpass iPhone shipments globally.
• The use of Google search on the iPhone is believed by several mobile industry analysts to generate the majority of Google's mobile search-ad revenue. Google has accelerated its plans to develop its own voice-activated search assistant for Android-powered mobile devices, which is expected to launch later this year, these people said.
• Knowing that Apple might reveal its new mapping software the week of June 11, Google scheduled a news conference for June 6. The purpose: to unveil "the next dimension of Google Maps."