Monday, September 24, 2012

MapQuest on the iPhone 5: Don't Forget Us!

Denver-based MapQuest has a message for iPhone 5 users: don't forget our app! The company--which says that Google and Apple are two of its biggest competitors--offers up its own, voice-guided navigation app on iOS6 and the iPhone 5, which it says is free, and provides real time traffic, one touch search, and many other features. The widespread dis-satisfaction with the new iOS 6 version of Apple's mapping app provides an opening for MapQuest to re-establish some brand and service recognition by providing a better app than Apple for navigation and mapping. Apple has come under strong criticism for its latest iOS 6 mapping features, which use Tom Tom instead of Google's mapping data. That data apparently is far less detailed, less accurate, and suffers from lack of real time traffic that Google's service offers. Apple and Google are battling it out for users, particularly since Google is the developer of the iPhone's primary competition, the Android operating system. Google is scrambling to provide an iPhone app for mapping, although that application apparently is sitting with Apple in its app approval queue.