Apple might be trying to separate itself from Google, the favorite provider of Maps on iPhones, as the Cupertino giant bought yet another mapping company. Back in 2009, Apple bought the 3D mapping firm Poly9 and in the same year they bought Placebase. Now, they’ve bought a third company in the same segment, C3 technologies.
While Poly9 is all about three dimensional mapping solutions, C3 Technologies is also a nice addition, since they create incredibly high quality and very detailed 3D maps. These require no human input, as they rely on 3D mapping via camera and a special plane with state of the art cameras and sensors. The C3 technology is similar to the one o the targeting missile methods.
The result is a photo-realistic models of the environment that surrounds us and a very efficient navigation solution. SAAB is a partial owner of the C3 Technologies and they did the clip below to explain us what this system is about. In the future, Apple’s iMaps could be based on this idea, in order to replace Google Maps. Frankly, this idea makes the Nokia Maps, Bing Maps and Google Maps look obsolete…
