Apple Acquires C3 Technologies For Advances Realistic-Looking 3D Maps, To Compete Google Maps? (Video)

October 29th, 2011

You are familiar with your current mapping services when it comes to Google Maps, Bing Maps or Google Earth, But a new technology will let you get beyond that and the Swedish company behind it thinks you actually deserve more and… seriously. Using missile technology developed by the Swedish military, C3 Technologies’ mapping service is able to create 3D maps with a stunning level of detail to provide users with incredibly realistic maps which include pixel-depth mapping allowing you to know exactly how high in the air any area of the map happens to be.

Now, Apple Inc has reportedly bought a 3D mapping company named C3 that has the technology to make killer 3D map.

According to 9to5Mac’s,
”Sure enough, we have now learned Apple is now the owner of C3 Technologies. Sources say that C3 Technologies CEO Mattias Astrom , C3 Technologies CFO Kjell Cederstrand, and lead C3 Technologies Product Manager Ludvig Emgard are now working within Apple’s iOS division. The leading trio, along with most of the former C3 Technologies team, is still working as a team in Sweden (interestingly, the division is now called “Sputnik”), where the C3 Technologies company was located prior to the Apple acquisition.”

If Apple is able to implement this tech into a homegrown Maps application for iPhone and iPad, I think that it would give huge impact to current Google Maps app. And not just the exterior world. C3 also has its eyes on mapping the indoors of buildings. It envisions a variety of applications of its technology, and has expressed a particular interest in augmented reality–provided cell phone GPS, which currently locates users less precisely than C3’s renderings, catches up. Below you can view a video showing an aerial view of Oslo rendered in 3D, and second video showing how C3 Technologies comes up with these jaw dropping maps.

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