How Bad Is Apple’s iOS6 Maps Disaster?

[sir pball]

84. Street View is going to be the nail in AMaps' coffin.

First, AMaps has incomplete map data to begin with - no point having Street View if you don't know where the streets are. There's a far bigger issue than that, though: AFAIK there's no 3rd-party source for the street-level imagery; airborne images, satellite or aircraft, are purchased from outside companies that probably don't have exclusive licensing deals with Google. Apple can fairly easily pick those up. But the Street View stuff is 100% proprietary to Google, they built the trucks, planned the routes, and processed the data, they own it and can do what they wish with it. I suspect that includes not licensing it to Apple.

Sure, Apple has the resources to go collect their own street-level imagery but the sheer immensity of the task puts AMaps at an almost insurmountable disadvantage on that front. They just don't have the time to roll it out before GMaps ships a standalone iOS app and (re)establishes their mindshare.