Stephen Withers
Friday, 02 October 2009 06:07
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
It seems that about three months ago, Apple purchased Placebase - a mapping company with some interesting technology. Now there's speculation about what Apple will do with its acquisition.
Back in July, a rumour that Apple had purchased mapping service PlaceBase barely caused a ripple.
Placebase founder and CEO Jaron Waldman now occupies an unspecified role within Apple's "Geo Team", while CTO Moran Ben-David is now an engineering manager at Apple.
Or at least that's how it seems to
Computerworld, drawing largely on LinkedIn profiles.
Dow Jones tried to get confirmation, but the Jaron Waldman working for Apple did not return a phone call, while Apple's Moran Ben-David referred the caller to the company's PR team which (characteristically) did not comment.
The practice of declining to comment on future products that may or may not exist is one thing; keeping an acquisition secret is another. But we'll go with the flow and agree that Placebase has apparently been purchased by Apple.
The obvious reason for such an acquisition would be to reduce Apple's dependency on a partner - currently Google - for the iPhone's map application. Apple also uses Google's maps in its iPhoto consumer photo management program for Mac OS X, allowing users to locate photos that weren't geotagged when they were taken.
What else might Apple have in mind? Please
read on.
