There are two companies that have done the legwork to acquire a really really good database of mapping information:
* TeleAtlas, which is in bed with Google
* Navteq, which is owned by Nokia, which has a deal to provide maps to Bing
So now maps is one of the few areas where both Google/Android and Microsoft/Nokia have a blatant advantage over Apple. Why would they want to give that up?
Err... What? Teleatlas is owned by TomTom who is currently in bed with ...Apple!
What Google does have is that they partner with whomever has the best available information in the area of interest (check out the copyright info when you scroll around the world on google maps on the web) and augment that with streetview, Yellow Pages, crowdsourced info from Android, etc (and vetted by hand)
Thank you for this input that seems obvious, but appears to be overlooked by most in this thread.
It also strikes me that Apple Maps do not have a web interface (unless I'm wrong). In my experience, anytime something I care about in my neighborhood is misplaced on Google Maps, I use the web interface to correct the location. Without this ability, I imagine that it could take Apple a long time to reach parity with Google Maps.
Microsoft's #1 enemy right now would most likely be Google -- Balmer has been waging a war on the online front with Bing, and so far, has been losing pretty badly.
As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- partnering with Apple would boost their Bing Maps market share into double digit percentage growth, all the while taking Google's map market share down. Even if you know the relationship won't last long and that in the end you'll have another competitor in the space, the rewards far outweigh the risks.
It's far better to take down the king and fight for the throne than to always be a peasant.
Exactly. All the big players are in competition with each other. Amazon and Google are at loggerheads over Android. But Amazon and Apple are competing in the online media delivery market too (Google is playing there too, but is a distant fourth right now to those two and Netflix). Microsoft doesn't care about Amazon, but wants a piece of the mobile OS market and the internet search world. And there are a hundred other smaller software companies and hardware OEMs trying to catch the stuff that drops out of the hands of the big folks.
There really aren't any major "alliances" right now. It's a mess.
I've not seen any problem with the information about roads or directions, rather every error that I've seen is connecting a business or place name to a physical location on the map. Which is quite confusing, because Yelp will have the proper location for a business of interest, but the new iOS Maps will place it at the same address but in a different municipality, or something crazy like that. I'm not sure what problems others are experiencing, though...
Nokia is having a bit of a cash flow problem, and an additional maps deal would probably be welcome income to give it a bit more margin to try and recover.
Those companies do not have good data for Asia, afaict. There are many other companies and data sets that would need to be integrated to provide even something resembling what Google has today with it's Maps service.
* TeleAtlas, which is in bed with Google
* Navteq, which is owned by Nokia, which has a deal to provide maps to Bing
So now maps is one of the few areas where both Google/Android and Microsoft/Nokia have a blatant advantage over Apple. Why would they want to give that up?