Apple Maps strategy to win back usage from rival navigation apps

In a product manager interview, you are asked to act as the product manager for Apple Maps. Apple Maps has lost ground to rival mapping apps, and your goal is to win that market share back. What would you do? Walk through how you would define and measure share, why you think people choose other apps today, which users and use cases you would go after first, the initiatives you would prioritize, and how you would track whether share is coming back. ```hint Define share before fixing it Apple Maps ships as the default on Apple devices, so having the app is not the problem. Decide what share should count, then find the moments in a user's journey where they open a different app instead. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should share count people who have Apple Maps, or the share of navigation sessions and place searches that iPhone users actually run in it rather than in another app? - Is the target only Apple device owners, or also people on Android, Windows and the web, where Apple Maps has limited reach? - Which countries matter most, given that Apple Maps' data quality and features differ by country? - What time frame and budget should I assume, and are partnerships or acquisitions for map and place data on the table? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A precise definition of share (default availability versus usage by job such as driving, transit, place discovery and sharing) and how to measure it, including rival usage Apple cannot observe directly - A diagnosis of why users choose rivals, separating reputation from current product gaps, with a way to test each hypothesis - A chosen target segment and use case, justified against the alternatives - Prioritized initiatives built on Apple's own strengths (device integration, privacy, default placement) rather than feature-for-feature copying, with success metrics and guardrails - Risks such as privacy limits on collecting place data, the cost of map coverage, review fraud and regulatory pressure on defaults ### Follow-up Questions - Your initiatives lift Apple Maps' share of driving sessions, but its share of place searches stays flat. What do you do next? - Would you build an Apple Maps app for Android? Why or why not? - How would you get richer information about places without weakening Apple's privacy positioning?