Apple

Apple could make bid for map firm Tom-Tom, analyst says

A Netherlands-based analyst says there's a 30 percent chance that Apple will attempt to acquire the GPS and mapping company.

Apple could make a bid for GPS and mapping company Tom-Tom, according to an analyst.

In a note to investors today, Hans Slob, a Netherlands-based analyst at Rabobank International, said he believes there's a 30 percent chance of Apple offering to acquire Tom-Tom  The move, he said, would be designed to quickly handle any troubles Apple could be facing with its Maps iOS application.

"Tom-Tom needs the cash from Apple, and Apple needs the know-how of Tom-Tom," Slob said,according to Bloomberg, which was first to report on the story.

It's not clear if Slob was simply making a bold prediction or has some knowledge of Apple's plans.

Apple's Maps application was hit hard earlier this year when it launched in iOS 6. The application, which is a replacement for Google Maps in iOS, was criticized for a wide array of flaws, including inaccurate information. Apple quickly apologized for the issue and said that it would improve the program in the coming months.

If Apple decided to acquire a mapping company to help it improve Maps, Tom-Tom wouldn't be such a bad choice: the company is one of the main providers of mapping data for Apple's Maps, along with Waze, Yelp, and NASA.

Exactly how much Apple would be willing to pay for Tom-Tom, however, is unknown. The company's shares today closed at 4.06 euros ($5.32), pushing its market capitalization -- a measure of the value of a public company -- to 900.9 million euros ($1.18 billion). In other words, even if Apple pays a premium to acquire Tom-Tom, the iPhone maker probably won't even notice a dent in its more than $100 billion in cash on hand.

Microsoft, Apple in battle over App Store fees -- report

Microsoft reportedly doesn't want to pay Apple a 30 percent fee for customers who purchase additional storage through its SkyDrive iOS app.

Microsoft and Apple are fighting a behind-the-scenes battle over App Store revenue sharing, The Next Web reports.

Apple is currently blocking any Microsoft SkyDrive updates in its App Store until the software giant agrees to share revenue generated through its application, the site reports, citing sources who claim to have knowledge of the disagreement.     

Microsoft currently offers its SkyDrive storage app to iOS users. The company rolled out the ability for users to purchase more storage from within the application. However, upon doing so, Microsoft decided that it wouldn't share 30 percent of the revenue generated through those transactions with Apple, leading to the kerfuffle.

Apple's App Store has clear policies on revenue sharing. The company takes 30 percent of the revenue generated from app purchases. Apple also requires that developers who use in-app purchasing share 30 percent of that revenue with it.

According to The Next Web's sources, a key sticking point appears to be Apple's billing policy. In order for developers to offer in-app purchasing, all billing for services must run through Apple's accounts system in perpetuity. So, if a current iPhone user who pays for additional SkyDrive storage decides next year to switch to an Android-based device, those charges will still flow through Apple's billing, giving the company 30 percent of the revenue, even though the person is no longer an App Store customer -- a prospect Microsoft reportedly finds unfair.

To make things a bit more troublesome for Microsoft, Apple has decided to stop approving SkyDrive updates, according to The Next Web's sources. Microsoft is trying to push through an update that addresses a bug that crashes the app.

According to the SkyDrive listing on iTunes, the application hasn't been updated since June 1.

The trouble between Apple and Microsoft has also reportedly affected third-party developers that link up their apps with SkyDrive and offer a way for users to sign up to Microsoft's storage service. Apple requires that all sign-ups for paid services go through its system.

For its part, Microsoft is trying to come to an agreement with Apple, according to The Next Web, and has offered to remove all functions that would allow iOS users to sign up for more storage. So far, however, Apple has reportedly ignored those requests.

"Similar to the experiences of some other companies, we are experiencing a delay in approval of our updated SkyDrive for iOS," a Microsoft spokesperson told CNET today in an e-mailed statement. "We are in contact with Apple regarding the matter and hope to come to a resolution". 

Apple Maps not fully at fault over Australian Mildura confusion

Australian government's official gazeteer includes area called 'Mildura Rural City' at location previously shown on iPhones      

    Apple wasn't completely wrong in directing Australians who searched for "Mildura" to the midst of the Murray-Sunset National Park – at least according to the Australian government's official gazetteer, which includes a location called "Mildura Rural City" at the place where Mildura was previously marked on iPhone maps.

As first noted by The Register news website, the official gazetteer – which is the authoritative reference for the names and locations of 384,104 places, objects and towns in the continent – contains an entry at the precise place to which Apple was directing hapless drivers until making a hurried correction on Monday.

Police in Mildura had warned that using Apple's iOS 6 maps could lead drivers astray and leave them stranded in the Murray-Sunset park, which at this time of year sees temperatures of up to 47C and has no water and poor phone reception. One man was stranded for 24 hours last week after navigating to the location, which is 44 miles (70km) from the actual town of 30,000.

However Apple's source for its misleading data is unimpeachable: the gazetteer is the official reference. It contains 36 entries for "Mildura", including the fateful one for Mildura Rural City – which has "official" status and is listed as a "district" (comprising an "agricultural area, county, district, local government area, parish or region").

According to Wikipedia, Mildura Rural City is in fact an area of over 22,000 sq km in the northwestern part of Victoria state – but a gazetteer has to locate every entry at a point, and Geoscience Australia chose one in the middle of the park, rather than in the town.

Apple's mistake though was to ignore another entry for Mildura, which the gazetteer records as having the class of "POPL" – that is, a population centre, even though the gazetter's explanatory index doesn't explain that.

The problem highlights an observation made by Ed Parsons, one of the chief geoscientists at Google, and formerly chief technology officer at the UK's Ordnance Survey. Writing on his personal blog after Apple dropped Google from providing its maps product in September, but before the problems in Australia, Parsons wrote: "Making maps work well on a phone is not actually a cartography problem … yes you can use poor maps or conflate content from various sources without care producing a poor map, and people might get lost … but the reason we all use maps on out phones is that they help us find stuff – maps on smartphones are interfaces to local search … To be fair to our friends in Cupertino the maps are not that bad, all maps have some mistakes, but the bigger issue is the lack of a true geocoded search index of places and the search algorithms that sit around it."