A little more than a month after the 3G iPhone’s release we’re all still waiting patiently for voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions for the smartphone’s GPS navigation system. According to an MSNBC article, we’ll likely be waiting for months yet. Three of the big GPS manufacturers are all rumored to be interested-Garmin, TomTom, Magellan-but everyone is pretty quite at this point until Apple clarifies the clause in the iPhone’s SDK that prohibits the development of turn-by-turn GPS applications.
TomTom has said, however, that the software they’ve developed for the iPhone “looks good and works very well”, but that the company will have to “look more closely to Apple’s strategy before we can say more about what kind of opportunities this will bring us”. Remember too that TomTom has bough mapmaker TeleAtlas, a supplier to Google Maps on which the iPhone’s navigation system runs. A definite plus in their favor.
MSNBC talked to both Garmin and Magellan, only finding out that Garmin doesn’t “have any announcements regarding the iPhone at this time” and Magellan does “not have immediate plans for this, but…are looking into it”.
Turn-by-turn voice directions would make the 3G iPhone way more usable, for both drivers and pedestrians, and will show up eventually. According to developers, at the latest we’ll see it before the end of the year. The question is whether or not Apple will come out with its own turn-by-turn voice app. Until they update the SDK and remove or modify that pesky clause, any software that’s been already developed can’t be sold and that’s a real shame.
The terms of the SDK are under a non-disclosure agreement so Apple will not comment, but the only reason the iPhone maker would be so slow in moving forward on this issue is that they have their own proprietary application in the works. Such an application would be hot, so why wouldn’t they want to profit from it themselves. But what’s taking them so long if that’s the case?
