By Shailesh Shrivastava email: s.shrivastava@mobilenapps.com | Jan 03, 2013 06:05 AM EST
Apple, which failed miserably with its Apple Maps, is reportedly in talks with Israel-based company, Waze, for its navigation feature.
According to the Israeli technology Web site News-Geek, Apple offered about half-a-billion dollars to Waze for the deal. Though, Apple and Waze both have refused to comment on the issue, a source of TechCrunch confirms that "negotiations are advanced, but Waze wants $750M and Apple is willing to do $400M plus $100m in incentives. Waze had less than $1M in revenues last year (primarily from ads). Negotiations may take awhile."
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Waze is the maker of the popular crowd-sourcing maps and traffic application that is already available in Apple's App Store. It is a social satellite-navigation application that mostly works on users' participation. By connecting drivers to one another, it helps people create communities that work together to improve the quality of people's daily driving.
The app also helps users in getting traffic, diversions, or accident related updates on different routes. It lets users update the maps which helps regular drivers finding new and shorter routes.
Apple's move to get Waze under its brand is being seen as a damage-control step after the Apple Maps created so many troubles for its users.
After the Apple Maps fiasco, Apple was forced to bring down its map service. Because of the wrong directions and inappropriate maps, the users had to face so many troubles.
The extent of the troubles had gone so high that Apple CEO, Tim Cook, had to apologies to the users personally.
"At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better," Cook had said in a letter to Apple customers.
He also recommended the use of Waze and other map applications until Apple fixed the problem. "While we're improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app."
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