After losing Waze to Google, Apple will acquire city transit app HopStop to bolster its Maps offering

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.

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