Embark is a Silicon Valley startup that Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), recently purchased, the company from Cupertino intending to implement its technologies directly in the service Apple Maps. Those from Embark have developed an application that contains detailed information about public transport routes in American cities, and Apple needs the technology behind it. Those from Embark were also financed by BMW in November last year, at that time the application for iOS had half a million users.
Apple Inc. keeps snapping up mapping companies. The latest: Embark Inc., a small Silicon Valley upstart that builds free transit apps to help smartphone users navigate public transportation. We don't know how much Apple paid for the several-person team it acquired very recently. But we heard from people knowledgeable about the deal that the company plans to directly integrate Embark's technology into Apple Maps. Embark, founded in 2011, builds apps for mobile devices powered by Android and Apple's iOS with information about transit systems in about half a dozen US cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
Although for now Apple Maps is useless in terms of providing information about public transport in Romania, maybe in 10 years the system will be able to tell us when the trains depart/arrive and who knows what else.
