I think Amazon one-upped Apple on the maps front by licensing Navteq's maps (now owned by Nokia) for the Kindle tablets and wrapping a nice API around them for

I think Amazon one-upped Apple on the maps front by licensing Navteq's maps (now owned by Nokia) for the Kindle tablets and wrapping a nice API around them for developers. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/amazon_google_map_bmrush/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/amazon_google_map_bm... Navteq's maps are way better than TomTom's. One of my friends had a TomTom GPS a few years ago and it was terrible, like once taking us around in circles for a restaurant and showing it was three miles away, when we could see it across the street a few hundred feet away. He had such bad experiences with it that he would borrow our Garmins and finally switched to Garmin a year ago. I just assumed that TomTom was Europe based so had much better coverage there and pretty horrible maps in the US. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/375415/how-satnav-maps-are-made http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/375415/how-satnav-maps-are-m... If I were Google, I would release a very polished maps app for iOS for $10 with ads, but they might be just content with some people picking Android phones just because the builtin maps experience and turn by turn voice directions is really good.