It appears that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has understood the theory, ‘change is constant’, which is why, the iPhone maker is opening up to accept reviews from Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) and Booking.com for its in-house Maps app. Till now, Apple relied heavily on the Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) reviews but it realized that its time to trim down its dependence on just one partner.
More partners
The exact details about how Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will determine the basis of displaying reviews from Booking.com, Yelp or TripAdvisor for a given hotel listing is not yet known. However, MacRumors has tested the results for several cities in the United States, which shows that Apple maps are still fetching reviews from Yelp for a majority of hotel listing. Moreover, most of the business listings too returned Yelp reviews.
Meanwhile, Booking.com reviews are dominantly displayed for International hotel listings on maps. With this new change, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is yet to reflect the change in its review policy on Maps acknowledgement page, which currently shows Yelp as its only data partner.
Then and Now
Expanding to include more data partners resembles a great move by the company for its Maps app, which faced a rough launch in 2012. The company’s inability to meet its customers’ expectations had forced Tim Cook to release an open letter to customers then, regretting the gap in its delivery. Over the last two years, the company has made remarkable progress by way of enhancing directions and introducing three-dimensional imagery. However, expected launch of transit integration for iOS 8 has taken a back seat amid internal politics.
Having said that, there are speculations that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is working to roll out the street-level imagery on the lines of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Inc. (NASDAQ:MSFT) offerings. MacRumors cited that a number of minivans were seen in multiple areas of the US, which are believed to be capturing street imagery on behalf of Apple.
