Roger Fingas
Long a staple in places like the U.S. and Canada, turn-by-turn directions for Apple Maps have finally come to the world's second-biggest country, India.
The option gives iPhone and Apple Watch owners a built-in way of navigating India's sometimes complicated road system. It remains to be seen how well Maps copes, as there are still periodic complaints about accuracy and guidance elsewhere.
Apple has simultaneously added the ability to hail Uber and Ola rides in-app, which previously required switching out.
Third-party navigation apps have of course been available in India for some time, but only Apple Maps has deep Siri and Watch integration. People can for instance ask their iPhone to "navigate home," then get custom alerts and haptic feedback on their Watch.
It's not clear why support has lagged in India. Turn-by-turn guidance has been available in places like China and Germany for some time, and even in small markets like Andorra, Gibraltar, and Vatican City.
Apple is a marginal player in the Indian smartphone market though, controlling just 1 percent. iPhones are typically priced well beyond the means of the average shopper, to the point that Apple is still selling the iPhone SE and 6s there as a solution. Part of the problem is import costs, which could be solved if Foxconn and Wistron establish a solid footprint.
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12 Comments
This is excellent news . Hopefully it comes to Afganistan,Pakistan ,Sri Lanka ,Bangladesh soon.
Waiting for the feature in Brazil as well 😴
So, India has huge tariffs to protect local industry? How interesting.
Apple indeed has a small share of the India market, but it is important to be accurate. Apple has never released sales numbers, so although the 1% figure is reported as a fact, it is in fact just an estimate from another analyst, and doesn't capture reselling of refurb phones which almost always is missed in articles discussing iPhone sales. The iPhone retains its value far beyond other smart phones, and there are many tens of millions of the iPhone 6-10 that go to people in less developed countries and elsewhere each year. A more relevant statistic for this mapping article is the estimated number of iPhone users in India. Surveys, with all their limitations, showed about a year ago that there were over 10 million iPhone users in India.
Well, this should be a massive boon to all twelve iPhone users in India.