As seen with the success of companies like Foursquare, the market for location-based mobile services is heating up. And while Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and Nokia (NOK) have robust mapping services, this is certainly not the case with Apple (AAPL).

It looks like this will change soon, though. Apple has purchased Poly9, which is a Quebec-based Internet mapping company. There are sketchy details on the deal as the site is no longer operational and it appears that the company's employees are now in Silicon Valley.

While sexy companies like Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) and TomTom (AMS: TOM2) sell technology that makes finding your location on a map as easy as pushing a button, the foundation of the business is in the maps themselves. In 2006, over half of all internet map searches referenced the products of just one company, TeleAtlas (AMS: TA).

Now, Amsterdam-based TomTom has announced plans for a friendly buyout of TeleAtlas for just under $30 per share, a 32% premium over market value. This is quite a bold vote of confidence by TomTom, since TeleAtlas consistently loses money, including an expected $7 million this year. The total cost of the purchase will be in excess of $2.5 billion.

TeleAtlas is a provider of mapping information to TomTom, MapQuest, and many other GPS systems, and is used in over 90% of U.S. 911 calls. The U.S. Dept. of Transportation uses TeleAtlas data, as do governments in many of the 64 nations for which they have compiled map data. TomTom is the world leader in portable GPS devices, with 52% of the European market and 25% of the U.S.'s.

The acquisition will allow TomTom to vertically integrate its product offerings and give it access to a much more diverse book of business. I expect the company to leverage their technology to offer seamless hardware/data products to the many customers already enjoying TeleAtlas's mapping services. Given the price paid, however, the sales pace had better be brisk, or TomTom will need more than a GPS unit to find its bottom line.

Google has a knack of taking something prosaic – such as email – and redefining the category. That's the case with its mapping products.

This week, Google announced an upgrade to its ultra-cool mapping product, Google Earth.  In fact, the announcement came at the company's inaugural Geo Developer Day.

In just a year, Google Earth has had over 100 million downloads.  Well, expect the downloads to increase again – since Google Earth has key enhancements.  There is four times as much coverage of land (about a third of the world's population can see their homes from a satellite view).  What's more, there has been a 4x increase in the resolution of the graphics.