IPhone users welcomed Google Maps with open arms when it was finally released by Google (GOOG) late last week. The app quickly vaulted to the No.1 spot in Apple’s (AAPL) App Store as more than 10 million people rushed to download it during the its first 48 hours of availability. Apple executives weren’t happy. Australian citizens were. According to new data, Apple’s mapping app is so bad that it was actually preventing a number of users from upgrading to iOS 6 — and now that Google Maps is here, those users are finally ready to update.
Ad network MoPub used data taken from the 12,000 iOS applications it supports in a recent study that found iOS 6 adoption grew a whopping 29% in the five days following Google Maps’ introduction.
“We observed since the launch of Google Maps for iOS 6 a 30 percent increase in unique iOS 6 users, and we think it’s related to Google Maps,” MoPub CEO Jim Payne told TechCrunch. “It verifies the hypothesis that people were actually holding back to upgrade until Google Maps was available.”
Google Maps for the iPhone and iPad touch includes Google’s industry-leading mapping service along with transit information and voice-guided navigation, and is available for free in the App Store.
