Google Maps App Unpopular With iOS Users

  • bzamayo.com/google-maps-is-not-built-in
The Guardian:

But a year on, a total of 35m iPhone owners in the US used Apple’s maps during September 2013, according to ComScore, compared to a total of 58.7m Google Maps across the iPhone and Android.

Of those, about 6m used Google Maps on the iPhone, according to calculations by the Guardian based on figures from ComScore. That includes 2m iPhone users who have not or cannot upgrade to iOS 6, according to data from MixPanel.

That suggests Google’s efforts to offer a stand-alone app since December have gained little traction with iPhone users.

“Google has lost access to a very, very important data channel in the North American market,” commented Ben Wood, mobile analyst for CCS Insight, a research company based in London. “But Apple was adamant that it wasn’t going to give up on doing its own maps, even when it had problems. This is a war of attrition.”

It’s really hard to compete with services that come as standard on the phone. Google can brunt it because of their size, but others simply can’t. Apple stifles development in many areas of iOS because of their monopolising power.