HopStop, the city-focused navigation app which passed 3 million users back in March, will be reportedly acquired by Apple, according to Bloomberg. Update: AllThingsD says Apple has confirmed the deal.
A potential HopStop acquisition is quite intriguing when you consider Apple’s decision to not provide transit directions in its own Mapping service. This left a major void which Google took months to fill on iOS, allowing HopStop to triple its size in a short amount of time.
This news follows reports from earlier today which claimed that Apple had acquired Locationary, a crowdsourced business data startup. If these acquisitions are in fact real, these deals would help Apple improve its poorly-received Maps offering.
As with all rumors, take this with a grain of salt until the deal is confirmed. We have reached out to both Apple and HopStop for confirmation and will update this post when we hear back. Update: Apple has provided us with the following emotionless statement:
Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.
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In any event, there’s no doubt Apple wants to improve its Maps app — even if it did end up losing Waze to Google.
Image credit: Spencer Platt / Getty Images
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