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The Business of Maps

This chapter builds on prior work on the political economy of location-based services to examine the business of mobile maps, asking the following questions: Who controls maps data? What are these data? Where do these data come from? What is their quality? What does it take to build new mobile maps? What are the motivations for wanting to build new maps? And what are the business and revenue models associated with these maps? The focus of this chapter is an examination of the efforts of one of Google’s key rival firms—Apple—and its struggles to build mapping capacity of its own at sufficient quality to be able to lessen (if not entirely break from) its reliance on Google. Apple presents an interesting case in that, as is well known, it is a major player in other areas of the mobile location services ecosystem, yet took industry pundits by surprise when it announced Apple Maps in 2012.