Apple has stealthily acquired GPS firm Coherent Navigation, and The New York Times received a standard e-mail confirmation statement from the company.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” the e-mail noted.
Apple has had some problems with its maps, and GPS tracking in the past that’s for sure, and by buying the GPS firm Coherent Navigation, the company is trying to bolster up its strength in a department that is lacking Apple quality.
Coherent navigation was founded in 2008 by engineers from Stanford and Cornell – and the company’s area of expertise is High Integrity GPS, or iGPS.
iGPS is a system that combines the signal from the traditional mid-earth orbit of GPS satellites with Iridium’s low-earth satellites that provide data and voice – they offer a phenomenal accuracy, a better signal strength, and it becomes a tough cookie to munch on when it comes to jam resistance. iGPS, Iridium states, can precisely pin-point the provided location information to within centimeters of the exact location.
Actually, it’s no surprise that Coherent Navigation has been finally bought by Apple. In January of this year a lot of key employees of the company have moved to Apple – even the firm’s CEO Paul Lego, and co-founders William Brencze, and Brett Ledvina.
As of last month the company’s official website has been taken offline, and since April the 30th name servers for the domain were updated to point to Apple’s servers.
At the current moment, we can only speculate regarding Apple’s motive of acquiring the GPS company – there are no statements that clarify the why’s.
Paul Lego has been reported of saying that he is currently working in the Apple Maps department. William and Brett are also working on related location engineering jobs.
It’s been a tough period since Apple gained its independence from Google Maps. Since 2012 they have struggled to maintain the same quality that Google offered, but they failed over and over again.
Coherent Navigation isn’t the only GPS firm Apple has bought – Pin Drop, Locationary, WifiSlam, Hopsto, Embark and Broadmap have also been acquired.
We’ll update the article as soon as more statements, and details will be announced.
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