Google Maps not coming to iPhone 5 anytime soon, Eric Schmidt says

The rift between Apple and Google over a map app grew wider Tuesday as Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said Apple device users shouldn’t expect the company to offer them a Google Maps app anytime soon.

Apple dropped Google’s app and replaced it with its own in the latest operating system, iOS 6, that it released last Wednesday. That meant the new iPhone 5 also did not include the Google Map. It had been a feature on the iPhone since the smartphone first launched in 2007.

The Apple Maps app offers new features to iPhone users, including 3-D maps, advanced live traffic updates and voice navigation, but it doesn’t support directions for public transportation and its maps app doesn’t appear to be as accurate as Google’s in some areas.

Schmidt, who was speaking in Tokyo for the Japanese launch of the Nexus 7 tablet, said Google hasn’t ruled out a possible future deal with Apple, but said the company currently doesn’t see the possibility of Google Maps coming back to iOS.

“In my opinion it would have been better to retain our maps,” he said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “It’s their decision, I’ll let them describe it.”

There has been no word from Apple.

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