Apple, which has already acquired a variety of companies to help its Maps team, appears to have recently purchased San Francisco-based GPS company Coherent Navigation. The company was founded in 2008 by a pair of engineers from Stanford and Cornell. While Apple and Coherent Navigation have yet to confirm the acquisition, several pieces of evidence support the idea.
Coherent Navigation CEO Paul Lego and cofounders William Bencze and Brett Ledvina all recently updated their LinkedIn profiles to show that they have taken a role at Apple. Lego says that he is now a member of the Apple Maps team, while Ledvina and Bencze note that they are in location engineering positions.
Coherent Navigation’s website was taken offline recently, as well. On April 30th, the name servers for the domain were updated to point to Apple’s own servers, further supporting the belief that the company was acquired.
It’s unclear what specifically the Coherent Navigation team is working on at Apple. While independent, the company was known for its High Integrity GPS system, which combined signals from mid-earth orbit GPS satellites with low-earth satellites to offer improved precision and accuracy.
Apple has made a number of acquisitions to bolster its Maps offering since ditching Google Maps in 2012. Apple has acquired companies such as Topsy Labs Inc. and Spotsetter. Apple has also been rumored as a potential buyer for Nokia’s struggling HERE Maps division.
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