Following the release of Google Maps on the iPhone and iPad, analysts have begun weighing the benefits each company gains from the inclusion of the new mapping application. Charlie Wolf of Needham believes that while both companies benefit from a better maps app, Google (GOOG) has more to gain than Apple (AAPL). The analyst notes that Google’s location-based ad revenue will increase due to the millions of iPhone users who have already switched to the service, Fortune reported. For Apple, Google Maps will help repair the bad image of iOS 6 and could even attract “a meaningful number of new users to the iPhone who had previously shunned it.” It could also slow the company’s effort to fixing its own mapping application, however.
“Users’ input is critical in improving the quality of the application, and Apple will now receive less feedback on its own Maps app,” Wolf explained. “The risk in the Apple story, and a legitimate one, is that the company may no long[er] innovate at the same pace and with the same disruption that marked the Steve Jobs era. The Apple Maps fiasco earlier this quarter, along with the firing of two senior executives, only served to heighten this perception.”
