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The iPhone’s mapping features have had an interesting evolution. Initially, they simply gave you Google Maps on your phone. This App wasn’t any different from Google Maps on a desktop, except it used multi-touch to navigate in the third dimension. About half a year ago, Google tinkered around with cell towers and allowed their App to figure out where you were, simply by triangulating the cell network. This feature, while useful, was hit or miss and often simply generates an error message.

Now, the 3G iPhone with support for 3rd party apps has allowed for the next step in the evolution. Steve Jobs demonstrated the iPhone’s ability to use a GPS chip to actively follow your progress on a Google Maps image. While, cool, it probably won’t do much to replace the stand-alone GPS. Except that I made the mistake of thinking that THAT was the App.

As it turns out, TomTom, maker of said stand-alone devices, has put down plans to develop a turn-by-turn App for the new iPhone and take full advantage of that GPS capability. Because the iPhone has a built in speaker and is touch-screen, I don’t see any reason why someone would own it and also buy a stand-alone GPS unit. Many GPS makers must be seeing th iPhone and the generation of phones to follow as a real threat to their niche. My guess is that more GPS units will move into the dashboard of the car or into phones…clunky boxes may not live in the wild much longer.

[Via Engadget]

UPDATE:
Electronista is reporting that the new SDK rules for the iPhone now explicitly state that “applications may not be designed or marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other mechanical devices; dispatch or fleet management; or emergency or life-saving purposes.” This would completely stifle the kind of App that TomTom says they have already designed for the iPhone. Either Apple is planning on its own navigation software (which doesn’t really sound right to me) or they are planning to only allow specific partners to do this. This would make some sense if they wanted to control exactly how the GPS feature is used and only want one or a few Apps out there that do this.