Another big-name guest was invited to the iOS party Monday when Apple announced that iPhones and iPads would soon include deep integration with Facebook. Twitter and Yelp have been there since iOS 5. Over the course of the next year, Apple said nine of the world's biggest car manufacturers will join the lovefest as they develop deep Siri integration for their vehicles.
But for Apple's main mobile rival, Google, the message was clear: Party's over.
Since the launch of the iPhone, Google's maps have been the most visible non-Apple–branded feature of iOS (along with Google as the default search engine for mobile Safari). The Google-powered iOS Maps app looks and feels like the maps on Google's own site, down to the Google logo in the corner.
For iOS 6, scheduled to be released this fall, Apple says it's built its maps from the ground up. The first hint that iOS would no longer rely on Google for navigation came when Apple caused a mini-scandal (at least among map nerds) when contributors to the user-built mapping service OpenStreetMap found evidence of their data being used in the iOS version of iPhoto without the proper credit. (More recent versions of iPhoto for iOS do credit OpenStreetMap deep within the app settings.) Now iOS users will get a full-on Google-free map experience that includes 3-D renderings of major cities and real-time traffic updates. The iOS Maps app will also have turn-by-turn directions, which have long come standard with Google's mobile Android operating system.
The change rids a native iOS app of its chief competitor's logo. But Apple gave no indication it had banished Google's maps from non-native iPhone or iPad apps available from the app store. If so, then Apple will still have to prove that its maps can compete, says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research.
"The value is not what is pre-installed," Chowdhry says. "The value is how good an application is."
Chowdhry points to Apple's nearly defunct iCloud predecessor iDisk, which withered in the app world while cloud-storage darling Dropbox flourished. Dropbox is available in the Apple App Store, but the connection ends there as it relies on Amazon servers to store users' data, he said. Despite minimal marketing, Dropbox caught on while iDisk heads for
Apple's dust-heap at the end of the month.
"The good news spreads like a fire. And the bad news also spreads like a fire," Chowdhry says.
How much Apple has spent to push Google off the iOS front page isn't clear. The Cupertino company has reportedly gobbled up several small map tech companies in recent years. And the new map app appears to rely for its data in part on Dutch GPS navigation maker TomTom, which has its own iOS app. But mapping traditionally doesn't come cheap. In 2007, mobile phone giant Nokia spent more than $8 billion to buy GPS data and navigation software maker Navteq.
Any price might be worth the chance to taunt Google, seeing as Android shipped on more than twice as many phones during the first quarter of 2012 than iOS, according to research firm IDC. Scott Forstall, Apple's senior vice president of iOS software, openly dissed Android during Monday's iOS 6 presentation. He said more than 80 percent of the 365 million iOS devices sold through March are running the latest version of iOS. More than 75 percent of Android devices were still running version 2.3, Forstall claimed, compared to just 7 percent running the latest version, 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich.
As has become a common feature of Apple's new product unveils, the company's stock fell after the big reveal. Apple closed down more than one-and-a-half percent Monday, while friends-of-iOS Facebook and Yelp also ended the day lower. None fell as far as Google, however: As the market took a general battering, the search leader was down more than 2 percent.
