Everyone remembers the huge debacle over Apple’s built-in mapping software Apple Maps last year during launch? It quickly became the laughing stock of the portable navigation world, and Apple went so far as to promote other navigation apps over its own mapping software. While they didn’t put a dialog box in asking, “Are you sure you want to use Maps over the fantastic Google Maps software,” they did just about everything else. However, Apple claimed they were going to fix it. And these fixes have helped Apple regain marketshare on iOS devices (which arguably it should never have lost in the first place).
Apple Maps in iOS 7
According to a recent report from The Guardian, Apple has made successful inroads back into the dominance that Google possessed in iOS mapping. During September of 2013, 35 million iOS users were using Apple for mapping and directions, compared to the approximate 6 million iOS users still using Google Maps.
Of those 6 million Google Maps users, 2 million of them either have not, or cannot, upgrade to iOS 6 to use Apple Maps. Based on their report and ComScore data, a very small number of people are actively choosing to use Google Maps over Apple Maps.
With iOS 7, Apple Maps was updated with some nice improvements. Apple has a built in “night mode” that changes the colors of the display to be less jarring when there is no daylight. With OS X Mavericks, users can use the Maps software on the Mac to send routes and directions to an iPhone or iPad through a push notification, making mapping a breeze.
Google Maps in iOS 7
The story gets a bit worse, because while Apple is gaining ground, Google is losing ground overall. There are a lot of great 3rd party mapping programs out there, like Waze, that people may be using. Now that Google has purchased Waze and is starting to integrate that content, this might just be a lull in the overall Google success.