Confirmed: Waze And Others Contributing To Apple's iOS 6 Maps' Crowd Sourced Traffic Data
Shortly after yesterday's Apple WWDC keynote there was plenty of chatter amongst the pundits, journalists and developers about which apps Apple had screwed over with iOS 6.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's Maps story has been building all spring: in May the company confirmed it was dropping Google Maps for an in-house app with a 3D flyover mode, and at yesterday's WWDC keynote it also showed it would hand transit directions off to third-party apps rather than build them itself. Today's confirmation that Waze and other providers are feeding crowd-sourced traffic data into iOS 6 Maps fills in the third leg of that structure.
It is also the payoff of a longer arc: CNET flagged the wave of crowdsourcing coming to iPhone apps back in October 2009, and three years later Apple itself is consuming other apps' crowdsourced data as a core input to a flagship first-party product.
First-order effects
- Waze and the other unnamed traffic providers gain Apple's massive iPhone install base as a distribution surface for their data, without having to win those users inside their own apps.
- Google loses its default position on the iPhone's home screen, with traffic — historically one of Google Maps' strongest features — now supplied by third parties on Apple's terms.
Second-order effects
- Standalone navigation apps face a squeeze: their proprietary traffic moat can be licensed away, so differentiation shifts from data alone to routing quality and community features.
- Other data-rich app developers now have a template — and an incentive — to negotiate supply deals with platform owners rather than compete head-on for consumer attention.
Third-order effects
- If platforms keep absorbing third-party crowdsourced inputs at the OS layer, map and location services consolidate around whoever owns the distribution surface, with data suppliers becoming interchangeable commodity vendors beneath it.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are internalizing crowdsourced data networks once owned by independent apps, turning former competitors into suppliers of raw inputs.