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iOS apps are sandboxed. Maps app used to be fairly integrated with the native OS when it comes to opening an address in a webpage or email. If Google is to submit a independent app, some of those features will probably be loss unless Apple makes an exception for Google.

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This is a platform limitation: however, Apple also dropped the ball a little on this one and if Google had launched a native maps app on day one of iOS 6 they could have had quite a well integrated experience.

Previously, the standard way to open the maps app from within another app on iOS 6 was to call a 'https://maps.google.com URL. Rather than re-directing to Safari, iOS would pick this up and forward the user to the Maps app instead[1].

For obvious reasons, Apple changed this in iOS 6. Trying to open a maps.google.com URL now opens Safari. This means the overwhelming majority of apps that used to hot-link directly to the maps app now boot users off to the Google Maps website (since most apps have not been updated yet to support all iOS 6 features). It would be very straightforward for Google to adapt this to forward users back to their own app.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30058/how-can-i-launch-th...

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