Apple Acquisition Tips: BroadMap And Catch For Notes [UPDATE]
The battle continues between Apple and the rest of the software giants around the world, focusing today on maps and the keeping of notes. Apple has been tipped to acquire two companies as of late, one called BroadMap, focusing on mapping technologies likely aimed at improving the stability and abilities of Apple Maps. The other company tipped to have been acquired by Apple this week is Catch, a note-taking cloud-based ecosystem in competition with Evernote.
UPDATE: It would appear that BroadMap has denied the idea that they've been acquired by Apple entirely. This single Tweet [since deleted by BroadMap] was sent on the 23rd of December (the same day this article was published) at 1:21 PM Central Time. Spacially Adjusted, management of BroadMap and "key staff" have joined Apple while Apple bought the intellectual property of the company and are licensing it back to them so that they can still serve existing clients. Tomato, tomato.
UPDATE 2: BroadMap's Twitter comments on the situation have now mysteriously disappeared. How about them apples?
The reason the BroadMap acquisition is said by 9to5Mac's sources to matter especially is in its talent. It's been suggested that the mapping experts inside BroadMap are the reason Apple may have picked them up – while the full collection of bits and pieces in BroadMap's software feature set won't hurt.
Clues in this acquisition lie in the anonymous tips, but also in the recent note from the CEO of BroadMaps suggesting that they'd been acquired by a Fortune 500 company, with Apple looking to be the most likely of these top companies in the world. If Apple did indeed acquire BroadMaps, we'll likely see major improvements on the Apple Maps backend over the next few months.
As for Catch – herein lies an app that makes capturing notes with photos, text, voice, checklists, and more rather simple. Though they've not quite yet acquired the brand-name recognition that Evernote has – not nearly on the same scale – they've got a nice setup that would benefit greatly from the basic integration with Apple's iOS – look what it did for Siri!
With note-taking integrated with iOS and keyed-in with the cloud, it's difficult to say how Evernote would take the hit. Evernote's brand spans past the iPhone, of course, but again consider Siri – when was the last time you saw a voice assistant in the iPhone capture a top spot in the iTunes App Store?
Catch was most recently promoted as a hero app for the iPhone in a variety of banner spots from Apple (as seen at the head of this article). It's difficult to imagine the company shutting down at this point in their rather successful history without having been acquired by Apple directly.