In this decade’s great smartphone feud, Apple’s botching of its first self-built maps app would seem to count as a victory for Google. Apple sacrifices customer satisfaction in search of incremental gain against Google; customers gnash their teeth; Google grabs disillusioned customers.
On Tuesday, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt seemed to embrace the business opportunity presented by Apple’s misstep. Schmidt told reporters that Apple should have kept Google’s maps, and that Apple would have to make the call on whether a Google maps app to replace the once-native iOS version could get App Store approval.
Apple and Google are constantly talking, Schmidt reportedly said, but “we’ve not done anything yet.”
Reuters understandably took Schmidt’s remark to mean that Google would leave Apple stuck with their inferior app. “Google says Maps not waiting in wings for iPhone 5,” their headline read.
But like “you didn’t build that,” the parsing of Schmidt’s statement depends on what you consider the antecedent. Maybe by “done,” Schmidt meant Google hadn’t done anything to seek Apple’s approval, since multiple reports surfaced just hours after his remarks that Google engineers were indeed hard at work on a replacement Google Maps app for iOS that could be ready by the end of the year.
But why would Google play that game? Why not force Apple to live with its error while capitalizing on its superior map app to market Android to the smartphone equivalent of undecided voters?
For starters, Google has already received an avalanche of free advertising courtesy of Apple itself. In an alternate Google-free universe, Apple’s own maps could be the best thing anyone’s ever seen, since no one has Google’s maps to compare them to. But in the real world, any criticism of Apple’s maps cements Google’s reputation as the standard-bearer. And by waiting a few months while Apple swings from its own petard, Google only milks its martyrdom as the better product that prideful Apple expelled.
But Google’s apparent decision to keep an iOS version of Maps in the pipeline isn’t only about point-scoring. As Forrester analyst Ted Schadler observes, “Maps are the place where mobile matters most.”
Schadler’s comments actually come in the course of his argument that Apple had no choice but to cut Google Maps out of iOS. But his explanation also applies to why Google has no choice but to seize this opening to get back into iOS and take whatever chunk it can. Schadler writes:
It is precisely because maps are where the physical best intersects the digital that Apple had to offer maps. Maps are extremely valuable to customers, hence to Apple. It couldn’t outsource it to Google forever if it wanted to develop a unique mobile engagment [sic] experience to customers.
Maps aren’t just an app; maps are a platform. To make money off of that platform, Apple needs its own. If Apple ultimately does allow Google Maps into the app store, it will be interesting to see if the approval comes with restrictions on what Google can do within the app to monetize users’ attention. Until those discussions happen, Google has no reason not to try to get itself back to the iOS garden. Apple may be steering some travelers wrong, but maps alone won’t convince 5 million new iPhone 5 owners to recycle their new slabs of aluminum in favor of an Android device. But Google has plenty else to sell besides smartphones; a new maps app gives the search and advertising giant one more way to guide even the most ardent iPhone users along a Google-defined path.
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/google-maps-apple-ios/
