Apple Acquires GPS startup Coherent Navigation

Eric Slivka, writing for MacRumors:

In one of its latest efforts to bolster its mapping capabilities, Apple appears to have acquired Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area GPS-related firm founded in 2008 by engineers from Stanford and Cornell.

One of Coherent Navigation’s areas of focus was High Integrity GPS (“iGPS”), a system that combines signals from the traditional mid-earth orbit GPS satellites with those from the low-earth satellites of voice and data provider Iridium to offer greater accuracy and precision, higher signal integrity, and greater jam resistance. Iridium touts iGPS as having the potential to provide location information accurate to within centimeters.

That “appears to have” was converted to “confirmed” in this New York Times article:

To that end, Apple confirmed on Sunday that it had purchased Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area global positioning company, further bolstering Apple’s location technology and services.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company said in an email.

Not sure how that quote is a confirmation. Perhaps there was more to the email. But the founders now appear to be Apple employees, so it really does seem like a done deal.