According to IDC program vice president Karsten Weide, it's simply a matter of Apple and Amazon having advanced far enough technologically.

"Maps are very hard to do well," he says. "For one, there are only two providers of global, navigable mapping data, Nokia's Navteq and TomTom's Teleatlas."

Companies either need to make a deal with one of those or create their own set of geographical data, which is a time-consuming and expensive process.

"Secondly," added Weide, "Creating mapping software that deserves the name 'consumer product' is hard to do. [User interface and user experience] is just hard to get right, [especially] on small form-factor devices."

It's something Apple is apparently struggling with, at the outset. Initial reviews haven't found iOS6's maps to be particularly impressive, and the CEO of one of Apple's partner firms slammed the decision to go with TomTom as a source for mapping data in an interview with