Apple has been cutting its ties with Google applications, most visibly by developing its own mapping platform for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5.

 

However, it may have put its political rivalries ahead of customer experience, with its homegrown offering suffering a storm of criticism. 

 

Apple's mapping app is visually striking, with a heavy focus on 3D options, and has some new functions such as turn-by-turn navigation. But early users say it lacks several key features of the Google alternative, previously the default on the iPhone. These include street views, public transport routing, traffic information, and the listing of nearby points of interest.

 

There are also criticisms of lack of detail and accuracy, especially outside major urban areas. These were weaknesses in all the location systems in their early days, but Google and Nokia have invested heavy resources in making their apps comprehensive, and Apple's attempt indicates that a deep maps platform cannot be created overnight, even with the iPhone maker's resources and its string of location related acquisitions.

 

Google is expected to launch its own Maps app for iOS 6, as it did when Apple dropped the embedded YouTube from its platform. Although it is losing the significant advantage of being the preinstalled option, forcing users actively to seek out its offerings, that process should be encouraged by the furore around a sub-standard Apple Maps.

 

However, if Google does unveil its own product, the dispute could escalate rapidly if Apple chooses to block it – it has a track record of striking back against apps which replicate its core iOS functionality, and with so many mobile revenue streams now being related to user location and identity, this is a battleground Apple cannot afford to cede.

 

However, at that point, the argument would become the biggest test so far of the Apple model and how far it can exert control over its platform without alienating users by depriving them of the best possible experience – or at least letting them choose what that is.

 

“My expectation is that they would block Google's maps application from their apps store, which they tightly control,” Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group recently told LightReading. “If they do allow it I think they would do their level best to cripple it.”

 

 

Google's other route, should it pull back from a Maps app showdown, is to keep this product as a key differentiator for Android, and serve iOS users by enhancing its web-based Maps service. The issue is business critical – the giant earns more from iOS apps and services than it does from its own Android business.

 

And Apple is sidelining it on multiple fronts. In Russia, the iOS giant is reported to have signed a partnership with local provider Yandex, to support mapping and possibly search services for the new iOS 6 operating system.

 

Russian bloggers found Yandex's geosearch API included in the iOS “golden master” release, which was distributed to developers earlier this month. That means that location services on iOS 6 devices will now be based on map information from the local provider. For its new OS release, Apple broke the ties with Google Maps and turned to a homegrown platform, which it is enriching via a variety of partners which add localized or added value data.

 

The strategy strikes out at Google and Android by removing the web giant's brand and revenue generators from the default Apple experience, and an even more serious blow would be to side-line the search facilities.

 

According to TechCrunch, Apple and Yandex are negotiating an agreement to incorporate Yandex search services directly into the Russian version of the Safari browser. The firm accounts for over 60% of all Russian search traffic, though Google has been gaining ground recently and now claims 22%.

 

Earlier this year, Apple replaced Google with Baidu as its default mobile search provider in China.

And it is not just Apple eating away at Google Maps. Microsoft, of course, supports Nokia Maps, generally accepted to be the gold standard platform after the Finnish firm's purchase of Navteq, and this technology is the default for Bing and the generic Windows Phone OS.

 

Meanwhile, Amazon is giving Kindle Fire developers a new maps API, providing an alternative to Google, as part of its plan to build a de-Googled Android experience focused on its own services. This is also using Nokia's system (Amazon signalled its interest in mapping when it acquired 3D start-up UpNext in July).