AOL’s MapQuest has been in mobile mapping longer than any of its rivals, but it’s playing catch up when it comes to the iPhone, which remains the most important smartphone platform for the time being. This morning, MapQuest launched the iPhone version of its MapQuest4Mobile app (launches iTunes). Prior to this app the company has offered an optimized browser-based version for both the iPhone and Android. MapQuest4Mobile as an app has been available for BlackBerry for some time.

The new iPhone MapQuest4Mobile app offers a rich environment with innovative new features. There’s a great deal of personalization available and the app integrates the online and mobile experiences very nicely. The strategy here involves getting people invested in MapQuest4Mobile through personalization (MyPlaces) and customization (place widgets), as well as PC-mobile integration.

Directions, including multipoint routing, are well executed. Users can easily change the order of several stops on a multipoint trip by dragging one or more of those stops to a different position in the order. The route is recalculated accordingly.

When viewing directions in a list form, users can turn the phone (landscape) and see what MapQuest is calling “max maneuver” mode. Each step in the route occupies the full screen (second image below). This is helpful if the iPhone is on the seat next to you and you’re driving.

Users are also able to access routes and directions initiated on the desktop through the app, providing a high level of integration between the mobile and PC experiences. This isn’t “send to mobile;” it offers a deeper level of integration. Another example of this integration, registered users who have saved locations or directions via “MyPlaces” online can access all that information by signing in on the iPhone app.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the new app is the icon-based “one tap” local search capability. This capability isn’t unique to MapQuest (see Google’s Places Directory, AroundMe, ManGo, etc.). However the execution and associated customization is unique. It’s also an example of how companies are leveraging the phone’s location-awareness to make mobile searching somewhat less challenging.

Located on a carousel at the base of the map are graphical icons that pertain to different categories of businesses (i.e., hotels, theaters, restaurants, cafes, gas stations, etc.). Tapping one or more of these icons shows users all those locations near them. One can then get directions to or from any location accordingly.

Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MapQuest told me that the existing roster of “place widgets,” as MapQuest calls these icons, would be expanding and will include more branded widgets as well. Users can customize the carousel by dragging icons on or off:

A disappointment for me was the absence of any rich content or reviews at the level of business profiles (you get contact details and links to external websites). However, a very nice feature of the app is the way activated place widgets populate dynamically on the map as you drag it to new areas. That eliminates the need to do subsequent searches for the same types of businesses in adjacent neighborhoods or nearby towns.

Dwyer hinted to me that a future version of the app might allow users to create customized place widgets as well. The addition of more branded icons, the capacity to create customized place widgets and the addition of reviews would make this already strong app even more compelling.

MapQuest has beefed up its business locator tool. A scrolling vertical bar now appears on the upper right of every map allowing users to populate any map quickly and simply with different categories of businesses or, in the case of advertisers, with specific brand locations.

Here’s what happens when you click the logo for Holiday Inn on a New York map:

Note how Holiday Inn also has the display ad on the right side of the page (see below). That’s very deliberate and will be a feature of advertising on the business locator:

Users can also add multiple layers of business types and locations by clicking the various icons in the locator bar. I’ve added coffee houses in this case. MapQuest will be adding more advertisers by category but says it will limit the number of advertisers in a given category to avoid cluttering the locator bar and user experience.

MapQuest is doing a nice job with these features, but most of this was tested or implemented by Yahoo previously (although Yahoo no longer allows this sort of one-click display of category locations on the map). However what MapQuest calls “corridor search” is unique.

That involves locating businesses or types of businesses along a route. Here’s a hypothetical cross-country trip where I’m locating hotels:

In addition to the simplicity and appeal of the locator bar, this “corridor search” is really useful. And one could imagine how brands would love this too to help reinforce loyalty. There are lots of interesting things that could be done with advertising here (e.g., coupons).

This is yet another recent upgrade from MapQuest, which continues to roll out new features or enhancements on what seems like a monthly basis now.

As part of a wave of new features, MapQuest late last year introduced My MapQuest, a personalization tool for the PC side of the business. It subsequently renamed that offering “My Places” and has now launched it in mobile.

My Places for MapQuest4Mobile offers a rich user experience and the ability to save maps and directions. It also provides a bridge between the mobile-PC divide by offering consistency across platforms.

MapQuest4Mobile, the application, is currently available to BlackBerry devices (and free), although the company plans to roll it out rapidly to other platforms including Windows Mobile, the iPhone and Android (by Q2). Currently there’s an iPhone optimized mobile Safari experience for MapQuest.com but a dedicated iPhone app is coming.

The company also offers a subscription product with voice-guided, turn-by-turn GPS directions called MapQuest Navigator.

Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MapQuest previewed a roadmap for MapQuest mobile with me that emphasizes a uniform experience across mobile and the PC, as well as some interesting possible integrations with other AOL properties (e.g., AIM) and potentially other social media properties such as AOL’s Bebo.

Recently Google Maps passed MapQuest in monthly unique visitors for the first time. But MapQuest has been rolling out new products and services with much more regularity than in the past. In addition, on the PC side, today MapQuest Local introduced a concert tracker widget that uses default map location to show users who’s playing near them.

There’s some additional detail at LocalMobileSearch.

Forthcoming January traffic data will reportedly show that Google Maps has taken the lead from MapQuest as the top mapping site in the US. According to the numbers that I received (I’ve asked comScore to verify), MapQuest’s January monthly unique visitors were 41.5 million and Google’s were 42.2 million.

This is the first time that Google Maps has overtaken MapQuest. However my source said that time on site/engagement, as reported by comScore, is still greater for MapQuest than for Google Maps.

In some respects we have been anticipating this event for a long time, ever since Google removed links to competitors’ mapping sites from its search results in January, 2007.

Some people will argue that this is the inevitable (and potentially “unfair”) result of Google’s ability to refer traffic to its own properties. Indeed, Hitwise has reported multiple times that the bulk of Google Maps’ traffic comes from this sort of self-referring. A year ago in a post on Google’s gains against MapQuest, I quoted Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins who had written at the time:

Google sends more of its own traffic to Google Maps than to Mapquest, a change that occurred last March. This can’t really be attributed to an increase in consumers looking for Google Maps. We can measure this through Internet searches. Searches for “google maps” have increased but the term “mapquest” receives nearly 10x the search volume.

And those Maps referrals apparently increased significantly with the advent of “universal search.” But the fact that Google.com can refer traffic to Google Maps doesn’t fully explain what’s happened. There’s obvious truth in the self-referral scenario, but that would miss other significant factors.

Google has for several years been investing very heavily in Maps (and Earth), as well as distributing Google Maps across the internet via its API. The features and capabilities developed for Google Maps are more extensive and widely known than those of its competitors. And only Microsoft has matched Google’s investment in online mapping; however Redmond has not done as effective a job of promoting Live Search Maps/Virtual Earth’s capabilities to end users. Part of that goes back to Google’s search share dominance. But part of that is Microsoft’s failing.

Among the top mapping providers, Yahoo Maps was actually the early innovator in dynamic mapping more than five years ago with its SmartView offering that allowed users to find and interact with different categories of local businesses on the map. However Yahoo made a decision a few years later to opt out of the “mapping arms race” with Google and Microsoft and not match them feature for feature. As a partial consequence of that decision, use of Yahoo Maps flattened over time. MapQuest, for its part, made a similar decision, instead relying on the strength of its brand and user loyalty as a bulwark against the insurgents.

At one point I heard a former MapQuest executive privately complain that he had to justify everything he did in terms of P&L, while Google could spend freely, in his mind, and “lose money on its Maps.” That may or may not be true.

Regardless, Google steadily built out a large number of features that consumers and the market have found compelling (although not always). More importantly, Google has regarded Maps as a strategic product, arguably its most successful after core search.

Part of the continuing emphasis on Maps is undoubtedly due to its acquisition of Keyhole (in 2004), which became Google Earth. Keyhole CEO John Hanke became head of Maps & Local at Google. Hanke’s thoughtful and mature presence at Google has kept the product evolving and growing. And Maps/Earth are a PR machine for Google — witness the recent launch of Ocean and related press exposure.

Meanwhile, after a long period of near complacency at AOL/MapQuest, new MapQuest VP of Product Mark Law has brought his company’s product “out of hibernation” with a range of interesting new features (i.e., MapQuest Local) and a bigger push into mobile.

MapQuest retains enormous brand strength and may regain the lead. But the momentum is now in Google’s favor.

At the CTIA wireless trade show today Microsoft announced an extension of its existing relationship with BlackBerry maker RIM. Previously Microsoft released special versions of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail for the BlackBerry. The Live Search downloadable client was also available for Blackberry. However today the company announced that Live Search will be available on the BlackBerry home screen (no download required).

Yesterday Google announced a new live search downloadable client for the BlackBerry. MapQuest also introduced an improved mobile client for BlackBerry devices in conjunction with the trade show. (Yesterday Yahoo made two announcements connected to the iPhone.)

I wasn’t able to confirm whether Live Search now becomes the default provider for BlackBerry but that’s how it appears from the announcement. As part of the deal there’s also going to be a deeper integration of Live Search local data into Blackberry Maps.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, search results obtained from the BlackBerry Live Search integration will be the same mobile internet results as currently available through mobile.live.com.

The MapQuest 4 Mobile client (also for BlackBerry devices) emphasizes maps & directions — one of the top consumer usage categories in mobile — but offers local business search as well. In addition it has a “GPS Find Me” feature that allows a user to locate him or herself and then obtain directions to any destination from that point. It also tracks users as they progress along the route toward that destination.

While less innovative than the iPhone, BlackBerry is a critical device because it owns by far the largest market share for smartphones in the US (Nokia does globally). IDC reported earlier this week that BlackBerry had 53.6 percent of the U.S. market for smartphones in the second quarter, up from 44.5 percent in the first quarter.

MapQuest has recently stepped up development efforts, rolling out a new and improved “beta” site just a couple of weeks ago. MapQuest product VP Mark Law told me at the time that was the first of many changes and improvements to come. Accordingly, yesterday, the company debuted MapQuest Local a new “start page” (think MyYahoo or MyAOL) for local content. It features drag and drop widgets that can be customized.

AOL also sees MapQuest Local as a kind of open platform that will increasingly allow third parties to distribute their locally relevant content to MapQuest’s 48 million monthly users. While there are some conceptually similar things in the works from others, this is a very fresh and compelling approach to local.

There’s no search box yet but that’s coming. I’ve got more discussion on my personal blog Screenwerk.

Separately in association with the mobile CTIA conference, AOL announced the release of Truveo video search for WAP browsers. There’s already an iPhone version of Truveo.

From the release:

Starting today, consumers can access the Truveo Mobile Video Search beta site from RTSP-supported (Real Time Streaming Protocol) mobile phones by going to http://wap.aol.com/truveo. The new mobile video search site taps into Truveo’s industry-leading index and makes it possible for consumers to search and browse through millions of videos on more than 300 websites whose content has been optimized for mobile devices.

Sphere, software that connects contextually relevant content to your content, has been purchased by AOL. The Sphere Blog confirms the acquisition, and TechCrunch suggests the purchase price was at about $25 million. Sphere initially launched as a blog search engine but then adapted into a “related content engine,” with clients from the Wall Street Journal, Time, Reuters, and others.

In other AOL news, AOL Search has created a unique user interface for searching on AOL via your iPhone or iPod Touch. iPhone/Touch users just need to go to search.aol.com and to be presented with the new user interface. AOL’s Farhan Memon said “combining AJAX technology and the iPhone’s easy to use multi-touch surface, our designer Lisa Hoover and lead developer Alan Tai have created a user experience that allows the richness of the Web to be delivered on a phone.”

They posted a video demo of some of the features for iPhone users:

Yesterday at the mobile trade show CTIA in San Francisco, AOL made a slew of mobile product announcements. The arguable centerpiece of that was the new AOL MyMobile application, not yet available. It offers considerable personalization opportunities and a Yahoo Go-like experience. The application seeks to bring together AOL desktop content and functionality in an elegant mobile package, including AOL Mail, AIM, AOL CityGuide/local search, MapQuest, Moviefone, and so on. It features “carousel” navigation like Go (as do other applications).

AOL is also tying together its desktop and mobile in many ways, hoping to educate users about mobile and leverage its existing traffic. MyMobile complements its WAP site, which was recently redesigned.

I have more discussion of aspects of the new AOL product launch, specifically the new WAP shopping site, at LocalMobileSearch. And here’s related discussion of the recently relaunched AOL WAP site.

Here’s our previous discussion of AOL’s recent mobile search upgrade.

AOL is quickly and quietly moving on a number of fronts in mobile to establish itself as a leader. Not long after the relaunch of rival MSN’s WAP portal, AOL upgraded mobile search and, last week, relaunched its WAP portal with more personalization and generally greater usability. According to this BusinessWeek article, “U.S. traffic to AOL’s mobile Web site is higher than that to Google Mobile’s and double that of MSN Mobile’s, according to Hitwise.”

On the advertising side, AOL owns Third Screen Media, Advertising.com and BT provider Tacoda, which are all being integrated into the recently announced “Platform A.” Accordingly, the company has an installed base of advertisers to plug into mobile distribution when the time comes and the audiences are built. AOL’s mobile EVP Scott Falconer agreed that “07 and 08 are about building traffic and usage,” which can then be monetized.

AOL’s history of reaching out to mass audiences and the association of its brand online with “newbies” could become an asset in mobile search as it moves from an early adopter phenomenon to mainstream in the next couple of years.

Questions of mobile usability and monetization will be among those being debated at SMX Local & Mobile next week in Denver.

AOL has moved its corporate headquarters to New York to be at the center of the U.S. ad and media universe and has introduced what it’s calling “Platform A,” an integrated ad buying platform and network that the company says has broader reach than any other today. Advertising.com and some of the more recent AOL acquisitions, including mobile ad network Third Screen Media and behavioral targeting firm Tacoda, are being integrated to provide an impressive array of capabilities that should rival Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.

From the press release:

The new entity, called Platform A, will offer advertisers access to the most sophisticated targeting and measurement tools available in the marketplace across Platform A’s unmatched network of third-party sites, as well as AOL’s owned and operated sites. Platform A already reaches more than 90% of the domestic online audience, according to comScore Media Metrix. Platform A builds on the success of Advertising.com, which operates the largest third-party display network, and integrates behavioral targeting leader TACODA, Third Screen Media, which operates the largest mobile media network, market leading video ad serving platform Lightningcast, and ADTECH’s global ad serving platform.

Simultaneously, AOL has stuck a deal with HP to offer co-branded local portals (like others such as Google-Dell and Microsoft-Lenovo): AOL separately announced today that it has signed an agreement with HP to offer co-branded, localized versions of its portal, toolbar and search on HP desktop and notebook PCs sold worldwide. Under the agreement, the co-branded portal will be set as the default homepage, and the co-branded toolbar and search will be default settings in various countries worldwide. The agreement extends and expands the existing relationship between HP and AOL, which provides consumers with a co-branded AOL/HP portal as the default homepage for HP consumer PCs sold in the U.S.