According to the New York Times, Apple announced its phones will no longer carry Google maps beginning in fall 2012. Instead, Apple phones will have their own built-in map service, as part of Apple's new iOS 6 mobile operating system. To date, Google maps is carried on every iPhone, and on every phone based on the Google Android operating system.   

Check out this excerpt from the New York Times piece:

The question is: Can Apple build a map service that does as good a job, or a better one, than Google has?

If Apple slips up, consumers in the highly competitive smartphone market may have a good reason to turn to Android phones. If Apple succeeds, Google will be under pressure at a time when it already has to deal with other competitors in map services.

Apple revealed the new map service along with its new iOS 6 at its annual developer conference in San Franscisco. Initially, Apple will rely on outside sources for its mapping information, just as Google did in the early days. Today, Google now pays for its own planes, cars, bicycles, snowmobiles, hikers, satellite data, geographers, and more, according to the New York Times. A few days prior to the Apple announcement, Google held its own news conference during which it emphasized how much it will cost Apple to become a major player in this space.

This emerging mobile mapping war is also reviving the privacy debate. CBS reports that New York Senator Charles Schumer is spearheading an effort against what he is calling "high-tech peeping Tom technology." The inaugural issue of trajectory magazine includes an in-depth feature by Jim Hodges, which examines the need to carefully consider the intersection of geospatial technology with law and policy, in particular the precedent being set by cases involving smartphones.

Forbes has a nice round up of the impending Apple-Google showdown as well. You can read the full New York Times piece here.  

Let the games begin.