Apple Acquires Coherent Navigation

For many of the largest Silicon Valley Technology companies, location software undergirds numerous applications and features in their products. For Apple, it has been a game of catch up. Recently, Apple confirmed that it had purchased Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area global positioning company, further bolstering Apple location technology and services.

Apple buys smaller technologies companies time to time and generally do not discuss plans. Founded in 2008, Coherent Navigation was a small firm that focused on creating navigation services based on partnerships with companies like Boeing and Iridium, the satellite network operator. It worked on high precision navigation systems, technology that is far stronger than many consumer grade global positioning systems, which are typically accurate to within three to five meters.

It has also worked on autonomous navigation and robotics projects, as well as projects for the defense department. The purchase of Placebase, a small mapping service, in 2009 represented Apple transition to building its own mapping technology. Over the following years, Apple bought a string of companies in much the same vein, including Locationary and Hopstop.

Many of these acquisitions were part of a broader strategy to move away from reliance on Google Maps, Google widely used navigation service. In 2012, Apple released its own mapping service using in house technology as well as some licensed from TomTom, a Dutch digital mapping company.  This replaced Apple old mapping application, which was based on Google Maps.