Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue has reportedly fired Richard Williamson, the manager overseeing its mapping service, because of the poor reception it received after the release of the iPhone 5, according to Bloomberg.
Cue took over the company’s Maps division late last month during an executive shakeup. He now oversees Apple’s online services group, which includes iTunes, the App Store, iBooks, iCloud, Siri and Maps. AllThingsD has corroborated the news of Williamson’s dismissal via its own sources.
The report follows on Scott Forstall’s abrupt departure from the company. Forstall, who formerly oversaw iOS development at Apple, was said to have been pushed out after refusing to sign the apology letter that was eventually issued by CEO Tim Cook. The letter said the company was “extremely sorry” for any frustration it caused users.
Apple has also admitted that its iOS 6 Maps app, which dropped Google for its own service, is a “major initiative” and it is just getting started with it. Google had provided the backend for Apple’s native Maps app on the iPhone since it was released in 2007, but the two parted ways this fall as increased competition drove them apart. The revamped Maps app in iOS 6 has been widely criticized as been inferior to the previous Apple-Google collaboration, with numerous users reporting that they have gotten lost because of faulty directions from the application.
Maps on iOS will get better over time as Apple collects more user data to improve it, but the company is also working to speed up the process. Bloomberg noted that the company has turned to outside mapping experts for help with its service, and it is also said to have reached out to TomTom to have it fix issues in the data that Apple licenses. For its part, TomTom stated publicly in September that it was willing to lend Apple a hand with the new Maps app.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.