A company like Apple is in the position of picking up a lot of companies, and we’ve seen many acquisitions happen this year. As many as 15 companies were acquired by Apple in 2013, out of which only ten have been revealed. Apple almost always has a boilerplate response when asked about acquisitions, the company says that it acquires smaller companies from time to time and doesn’t disclose for what purpose they were acquired. Multiple reports indicate that two of the five mystery acquisitions include mapping firm BroadMap and an Evernote rival called Catch, both acquisitions are said to have taken place in the last few months.
Apple has made a number of acquisitions this year that will help it to improve its mapping features, Embark was one such company. BroadMap offers a variety of different mapping solutions and its likely that they have been brought onboard to help improve Apple Maps. However, AllThingsD reports that Apple hasn’t purchased BroadMap, rather the acquisition has been centered around the company’s technology and team, BroadMap itself and its name have not been acquired. This isn’t the case with Catch, which used to a popular cross platform application for taking notes, similar to Evernote. It was shut down in August and while many wondered why that happened after a new product called Catch Team was announced merely a month back, that’s because it was acquired.
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