On August 4, Apple added new detail to its maps of Japan:

This new detail, which was released without announcement, appears to be sourced from Apple’s primary Japanese data provider, Increment P Corp...¹

...and this is reflected on Maps’s settings panel (below) as well as on Apple Maps’s “Legal” page:

But even though this new data appears to be from a third-party, it’s generally just as detailed as Apple’s homegrown data in the U.S.:

And in some cases, it’s even more detailed than Apple’s homegrown U.S. data. A good example of this is the upgraded park paths, which more accurately reflect their real-world shapes and widths:

The same goes for urban sidewalks. Apple’s Japanese data provider has much more granular sidewalk data that reflect actual sidewalk widths:

We also see this with roads. Here again, the data from Apple’s Japanese data provider more closely reflects the actual, real-world shapes and widths of roads and road intersections:

And Apple’s Japanese data provider also has special data for steps and staircases that Apple seems to lack in the U.S.:

On the flip side, Apple’s U.S. maps tend to depict a much greater variety of vegetation and landcover detail than what we see in Japan with this latest update:

Apple’s U.S. maps also tend to have much greater coverage and detail of parking lots and the roads and paths within them:

And we even see interesting differences between how Apple and IPC collect baseball diamond shapes. Apple, for instance, maps out the patches of dirt for the infields and pitcher’s mounds, while IPC maps out the foul lines:

Apple has been steadily refining and improving its Japan cartography since Apple Maps’s launch in 2012...

...and today’s map looks completely different than it did in 2012:

Numerous local details have been added, especially regarding Japan’s transit systems:

Japan is an important country for Apple; it’s where Apple has the highest mobile market share:

Given this, it makes sense that Apple also released Look Around for Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya—the first areas outside of the U.S. to receive it—on the same day that it released its Japan data updates:

In June, TechCrunch reported that “Look Around” was coming to major Japanese cities “this fall”. So it appears that Apple added Look Around in these areas at least a month and a half ahead of schedule.

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1  On June 22, 2020, Apple announced that it would expand its new map to Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom “later this year”—but made no mention of Japan.

A data update of the size and scope we see in Japan would’ve required months, if not years, of careful planning and coordination. So it’s highly likely that Apple was already planning this release at the time of its WWDC announcements six weeks earlier.

In other words, by having not named Japan along with Canada, Ireland, and the U.K., Apple seems to be confirming that this is in fact a third-party data update—and that it doesn’t consider it to be an expansion of its new map.

The timing of this Japanese data update also coincides with the now-postponed Tokyo Olympics—further suggesting that this update had been planned for some time. ↩︎