Apple acquires high-precision positioning company

Apple has acquired Coherent Navigation, an American company that specializes in location determination with a claimed accuracy of a few centimeters. For this purpose, the company deploys commercial satellites in low Earth orbit.

Apple has secretly confirmed its acquisition of Coherent Navigation to The New York Times, stating that it is more likely to acquire small businesses. MacRumors was the first to announce the acquisition. Founded in 2008, Coherent focuses on a system called High Integrity GPS or iGPS. The company combines signals from GPS satellites with those from Iridium’s communication satellites. This would allow for more precise positioning, down to a few centimeters, and it would improve signal integrity.

Coherent Navigation is collaborating with Boeing for this and focuses on applications for, among other things, defense. It is not clear to what extent the technology can be used for consumer applications, nor is it known what Apple will use it for. Many Coherent employees have recently started working at Apple, so it may be an acquihire, where the acquisition company is mainly interested in the expertise of employees.

The acquisition follows in a long line of acquisitions from Apple related to its navigation service, including those from map companies such as BroadMap, Embark and HopStop.com. In 2012, Apple replaced Google Maps with its own Maps service in iOS. Initially, there was a lot of criticism of the navigation service. This even forced Apple to apologize to its users and promise to keep improving the service.