Cupertino, California — Ever since establishing in 1976, Apple has so far acquired 28 companies, less than one acquisition a year. But now the Cupertino company is discarding its traditional ethos and is on a buying binge with tons of cash, and has recently shown an increasing enthusiasm to spend it to acquire companies like Quattro Wireless and Lala. Now the company has apparently plunked down an unknown amount to acquire a Canadian online mapping company “Poly9 Group,” which creates 3-D global maps, another sign it is moving away from Google, which provides the popular Google Maps on the iPhone and many other devices.
Though neither company has confirmed the deal, but according to a report by Canadian newspaper The Sun which states that Apple recently acquired the Quebec-based firm and moved all but two of its employees to Apple’s Cupertino campus.
An Apple spokeswoman did not confirm the deal, saying, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not remark on our purpose or plan.”
A customary practice for such companies that have been recently purchased is to post a note to their website; Poly9’s site appears to be offline.
Poly9 is probably best known to everyday Internet users for developing the Poly9 Globe, a 3D mapping software that produces flash-based representation on the earth that can have data and mapping information plotted onto it in a manner akin to Google Earth, which employs satellite imagery, aerial photography and geographic information systems to create a life-like virtual atlas.
Moreover, similar technology has been adopted by a number of companies — including Apple itself — and Poly9 has built a strong reputation in the market by working with such organizations as Microsoft, Yahoo!, including Apple for producing maps APIs, and might be best known for fueling a touch of Christmas magic for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) holiday tracking of Santa Claus’s annual trip around the world, and MSNBC.
Its common products include the cross-browser, cross-platform, download-free, 3D Poly Globe – basically a Google Earth competitor that also collects location and altitude data from the user.
There is still no clear indication given by either company as to what Apple will do with the technology. This latest Poly9 acquisition is Apple’s second purchase in the mapping technologies field; earlier this year, Apple acquired PlaceBase, which developed a mapping API called Pushpin. These acquisitions does indicate Apple has something big in store for its mapping service.
Last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board of directors after being on it for more than three years.
“Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the time.
“Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to step down his position on Apple’s board.”
But if correct, the latest deal signals a larger shift for Apple as it seeks to stay ahead of the market it helped popularize–smart phones: some speculation indicates that the company is gearing up to take on Google Earth and Google Maps; however, it seems more likely that Apple intends on raising the bar for mobile mapping applications…and, of course, if it can pull wonderful mapping apps out of its hat, they will be exclusive to Apple products like the iPhone and iPad.