Apple acquires mapping visualisation startup Mapsense: Report

Apple has reportedly purchased a San Francisco-based mapping startup Mapsense that builds tools for analysing and visualising location data. It is being said that Apple has paid somewhere between $25 million and $30 million for the company which comprises of 12 team members.According to Re/code, over the years Apple has quietly acquired several location-services companies including HopStop, a crowd-sourced maps tool in 2013. It also acquired Coherent Navigation, a GPS company earlier in May. Apple's new acquisition Mapsense was formed in 2013 by Erez Cohen, a former engineer for the data science company Palantir Technologies.[caption id="attachment_281797" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: Mapsense[/caption] “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company said in a statement.The report points out that the company 'lets users 'slice and dice graphical models of maps' that hold huge sums of data. The cloud-based company had launched its developer platform in May this year.It is not clear at the moment for what Apple will be using the Mapsense technology, but we're hoping it will add to improving the company's Maps app for iOS devices. In the past, Apple has acquired mapping firms such as Locationary, WifiSLAM, Embark, and Broadmap as well.