There's been a long-standing rumor that Apple is at work on big mapping/navigation project for iOS. The company hasn't let much slip about its plans, but public job postings paint the picture that Apple's been assembling a team for just such a mission. Now an eagle-eyed user of the iOS 5 developer release spotted something curious in the operating system's legal notices, adding more ammunition to the case for a new Apple mapping app.
Notices include those dealing with the offerings of at least nine companies with ties to mapping and navigation. Though some of them provide data for Google's map services as well, there are distinct entries here that look like they're the result of new agreements that Apple has made itself.
Among the companies, Waze deals in crowd-sourced traffic data. We heard that Apple was interested in just that sort of technology, relying on information gathered from users to provide real-time congestion information. That association is likely to be the closest thing to a smoking gun we're liable to come across at this point.
While Apple is still using Google data for Maps at this point, it seems that it's setting itself up for a future where it will have the resources to offer its own mapping solution; we just don't know how long that will take.
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