MSNBC reports some rather interesting news about Apple’s iPhone SDK terms and the potential inclusion of Turn-by-Turn Navigation on the iPhone 3G.
Previously, MacBlogz has reported that GPS features were possibly seeded with iPhone Firmware 2.1. Additionally, a crafty find regarding some expanded Core Location items, which could in theory allow for turn by turn GPS navigation were discovered, but still, we haven’t seen anything remotely close to turn-by-turn GPS Navigation like our Garmin touting friends experience.
“Sal Dhanani, co-founder of TeleNav, a GPS software maker, said as soon as Apple announced its “Software Developer Kit,” the company obtained it and started working on a GPS program,” MSNBC explains. “Just like every other developer, we signed up for the program and downloaded the SDK, even though there were some specific clauses in the developer agreement that said you can’t write GPS navigation applications,” he said.
TomTom explains: “We have made our navigation system run on the iPhone; it looks good and works very well,” said Dutch-based company TomTom, in a statement to msnbc.com. “We will have to look more closely to Apple’s strategy before we can say more about what kind of opportunities this will bring us.”
“When I spoke to Apple, they didn’t say such applications would be prohibited,” said Avi Greengart, Current Analysis’ research director for mobile devices. “What is clear is that there aren’t any available yet.”
MSNBC continues to explain that “Dhanani said TeleNav has proceeded ahead with its GPS program, TeleNav Navigator, for the iPhone, and found that it works quite well on the device “which is more than capable of providing an application like this,” he said. “The GPS worked really well.”
“But the if and when is a different matter. It’s “hard to say, because Apple does have to update their agreement for navigation to happen,” he said. “We figured it’s a big category, navigation, and Apple will change their stance, because there’s going to be a lot of consumer demand for it.”
While Apple may be developing their own solution, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Product Marketing Greg Joswiak described voice-based, turn-by-turn navigation apps as “complicated.”
Apple did not respond to a question regarding their own navigation app.
Read - iPhone Atlas
Read - MSNBC
