Even though Apple has let Google answer life’s navigational questions for us thus far, it doesn’t mean that Apple wants one of its biggest competitors cashing in on the iPhone and iPad forever.
Speculation surrounding Google Maps getting replaced in iOS has been around for years. In 2009, Apple bought a couple mapping companies. In mid-2010, the iPhone maker scrapped Google and Skyhook‘s location databases in favor of its own, and a couple months later started hiring iOS engineers with mapping experience. That’s more than enough to keep the rumor mill spinning, but things got a bit juicier today. The legal disclaimer section of the iOS 5 included references to a number of different mapping companies that aren’t Google, most notably TomTom.
Of course, Apple just recently extended its mapping agreement with the search beast so if a big change is headed our way, it won’t get here for quite a while.
Here’s a list of companies included in the iOS 5 map data section:
- CoreLogic
- Getchee
- Increment P Corp
- Localeze
- MapData Sciences Pty Ltd. Inc
- DMTI
- TomTom
- Urban Mapping
- Waze
[via TUAW]