As Germany’s big three fights it out with Uber over Nokia’s Here mapping platform, Apple has snagged yet another navigation company, bringing the total to nine acquisitions in just the past two years.
The latest company to get absorbed by the Cupertino monolith is Coherent Navigation, which had less than 10 people and specialized in airline, defense, agriculture, construction, mining, and oil and gas exploration.
MacRumors broke the story about the acquisition, which was later confirmed to the New York Times, although details on the deal haven’t been released.
Coherent’s core technology is several steps beyond the navigation systems in consumer products, with highly precise positioning that’s been used in everything from robotics to Defense Department projects, as well as – you guessed it – autonomous navigation.
The acquisition is just the latest in a string of purchases Apple has made since 2013, including BroadMap, Embark, HopStop, Locationary, PlaceBase, Pin Drop, Poly9, and WifiSlam. And those are just the ones we know about.
This might add more fuel to Apple car flames, but it’s more likely to be yet another piece of the larger puzzle to evolve Apple Maps. Because you know it’s bad when your product reaches HBO meme status:
Contact the author at damon@jalopnik.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: 7301 D7FC 2FF6 D437 E5A7 0568 3A14 624A 1800 4C85