Apple has acquired Coherent Navigation, a commercial high-precision navigation service provider, in efforts to improve its own Apple Maps service.
Coherent Navigation uses satellite technology for its navigation and has been involved with classified and unclassified works for the US government.
Coherent Navigation focuses on High Integrity GPS ("iGPS"), where signals from the traditional mid-earth orbit GPS satellites are combined with those from the low-earth satellites of Iridium.
According to reports, the acquisition is likely to have taken place earlier this year, as Coherent Navigation CEO Paul G. Lego’s LinkedIn profile shows that he has been a member of Apple Maps team for the past five months.
Apple said: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plan."
The iPhone maker did not reveal details of the acquisition, nor did it say how it plans to use Coherent Navigation’s technology for its own service.
Apple has been trying to improve its mapping technology for quite some time now, and in an attempt to improve the service the company previously bought mapping start-ups like BroadMap, Embark and HopStop.com.
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