How bad is what some are calling Apple’s map-gate? Bad enough that Apple CEO, Tim Cook, offered an online apology on Friday, saying “With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment.” Apple is recommending that users try alternative solutions for iOS while it works hard to address the mapping issues.
Cook’s statement essentially admits there is an issue, but understandably puts little context on the impact to users. That’s why this set of data from Snappli comes in handy to get some quantification of how widespread Apple’s Map issue is on its user base. Snappli offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS devices that compresses data over mobile broadband to help folks use less of their 3G or 4G monthly allowance. By looking at the following data from 5,000 Snappli users on iOS, the following information puts some perspective around iPhone owners and Maps in iOS 6:
- 64% of Snappli users have migrated to iOS 6 within the last few weeks (UK and US)
- Before the upgrade to iOS 6, 25% of Snappli users were viewing Google Maps at least once a day
- Once they moved to iOS 6, that immediately went to 35% of users using Apple Maps
- However, over the next 5 days that drops down to 4%
- Summary: before iOS 6 1 in 4 people were using Google maps at least once a day. After iOS 6: 1 in 25 using Apple maps and falling.
Long story short: We already knew that Apple’s mapping isn’t up to par for many and that the company is working on making the service better. I have no doubt it will as soon as it can. But now we have a reasonable idea of how big of an impact the problem is when it comes to actual users. I suspect Apple does too since it can see how many people are, and were, tapping it for mapping services.
