Apple acquires transit-navigation company, HopStop

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

Apple has reportedly bought HopStop, a New York based location company that provides real-time social transit navigation in 7 countries, for 700 transit agencies, on 20,000 lines, and 750,000 stops. According to Peter Borrows and Sarah Frier for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. (AAPL) agreed to buy online transit-navigation service HopStop.com Inc., people with knowledge of the deal said, seeking to improve mapping tools after a rocky debut for its directions software last year.

When Apple relaunched their Maps app with iOS 6 in 2012, it was without the transit directions that many users of the previous, Google-powered versions depended on. Apple will bring their Maps to the Mac later this year with OS X Mavericks.

If, when, and how a HopStop acquisition will help Apple Maps in that regard isn't immediately clear. What is clear, however, is that Apple continues to invest heavily in mapping companies and their technology. To date, that includes HopStop, Locationary, WiFiSLAM, 3C Technologies, Poly9, and Placebase.

That being said, it'd be nice to see at least basic transit directions return to the built-in Maps app, wouldn't it?

Source: Bloomberg

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

5 Comments
  • One day they may even come up with some kind of poor man's version of Nokia Transit. Not a day goes by now that Apple would not be falling further and further behind nimbler competitors in hardware, innovation or services. As a user I must admit it is a sad state the company has fallen into.
  • Nobody that spews as much negative crap as you have over the last few months could possibly still be using that product. And if you are (personally I think you just get a troll-like hard on posting here).........it might be time to switch bc clearly Apple isn't working out for you. You have decent options now besides an iPhone, so there's no need to suffer as much as you would like people to believe. Please don't reply bruh, it's bad enough I see your usual b.s. comments on here.....no need for another
  • Too late. I left Apple because of the maps. They shouldn't remove functionality from the phone I paid for then try to fix things.
  • Hi Sebastian! Hey I can't say I blame you for leaving apple. I almost did the same thing. I rely very much on public transit and was pissed. If google hadn't put their maps back on apple, I'd have certainly left. But all that said, you said "hey shouldn't remove functionality from the phone I paid for then try to fix things." LOL what should they do then if not then try to fix things? close shop? I agree what they did was dumb but if apple realizes that now and wants to fix it, hey I say its about time. Good on them realizing their folly. I'm glad their maps flopped so hard and they learned a good lesson from it. Now its time for redemption and it seems they're working to earn it. Have a nice day man! :)
  • I dropped Hop top for Transit. But I only dropped it because the GUI in hop stop was not very good. I think it was just a shell their website. But I'm sure their data is top notch. Good for you Apple, keep it up! Sent from the iMore App