Here’s hugely interesting: seems that in April, Apple dumped its previous location service partners, Google and Skyhook, preferring instead to use its own location databases.
Now, if you think about it, these databases must constitute at least in part some of the intellectual property Apple acquired with its Quattro purchase. That naturally boosted by iTunes and iPhone data gathering.
Apple’s move to control its own harvest of location-based data makes complete sense too from the pov of a company tryiung to get iAds off the ground.
In a letter from Apple’s chief legal beagle, Bruce Sewell, AAPL confirmed the changes (kudos to TechCrunch).
To provide the high quality products and services that its customers demand, Apple must have access to comprehensive location-based information. For devices running iPhone OS versions 1.1.3 to 3.1, Apple relied on (and still relies on) databases maintained by Google and Skyhook Wireless (
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