Apple (AAPL) has long played second fiddle in the maps business, which Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) has dominated for years through its Google Maps app.
It appears the Cupertino, California-based tech giant is sick and tired of playing second fiddle.
In a new app quietly made available to iOS developers, Apple is trying to gain a foothold in indoor mapping, an area that hasn’t been completely mastered, yet. If successful, the endeavor could be used in everything from simple indoor navigation to location-based sales deals and hyper-targeted advertising.
Translation: The app — it’s called “Indoor Survey” and it’s only available to developers at the moment — could be a long-term boon for AAPL stock if all goes well.
The Next Phase in Mapping
Described by Cultofmac.com as “Apple’s version of the Harry Potter Marauder’s Map,” the app works as follows:
“By dropping ‘points’ on a map within the Survey App, you indicate your position within the venue as you walk through. As you do so, the indoor Survey App measures the radio frequency (RF) signal data and combines it with an iPhone’s sensor data. The end result is indoor positioning without the need to install special hardware.”
For AAPL, this is a brilliant, low-cost way to crowdsource the brand-new field of indoor cartography. Unlike Google Maps, which relies on poor saps roaming the world’s roads with a camera on their roof, venue owners and users themselves can map the guts of a building for Apple…and for free.
Google Maps, while it has some cool indoor mapping in select venues — 360-degree views of a glow-in-the-dark putt-putt being my personal favorite — no one’s mastered mapping a building’s interior, yet.
So, how could this help AAPL stock? Well, not only would it help to improve Apple’s ecosystem and reverse the embarrassment and brand damage that came in 2012’s notorious botched Apple Maps rollout, it could revolutionize brick-and-mortar retail and advertising.
AAPL already has iBeacons, which lets retailers send location-specific notifications to users within a specified area. That could be enhanced with the Indoor Survey app; imagine walking through a Target (TGT) and getting a notification telling you where the best deals were for you based on recent purchases.
Indoor mapping brings us one step closer to the world imagined in Minority Report, wherein people roaming through malls are addressed by name by electronic ads, which tailor their message to the individual after quickly scanning the unique eyes of passersby.
Indoor mapping is a touch less creepy, but it could still prove wildly useful to advertisers, who could pay for access to iPhone users’ traffic data (with their consent, of course). AAPL could feasibly charge retailers and advertisers a fee for using their platform and data.
The full range of Apple’s ambitions are currently unclear, but recent patents in the field indicate AAPL hasn’t conceded defeat in the maps business yet, and that indoor mapping is where it plans to distinguish itself.
While Apple’s previous blunders in maps give me some pause, this opportunity is huge, and investors would be remiss to dismiss it.
As of this writing, John Divine was long AAPL stock. You can follow him on Twitter at @divinebizkid or email him at editor@investorplace.com.
