Apple has reportedly bought Poly9, a canada based online mapping company, and has relocated most of the firm’s employees to Apple’s Silicon Valley, California offices, If reports by Cyberpresse and The Sun are to be believed, Poly9 would be the second mapping company Apple purchased  after its acquisition of  Placebase, a company that produced a maps application programming interface similar to  Google Maps.

These buy-outs suggests that Apple plans to develop its own in-house mapping software for its popular mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and in the process upthe ante in its battle with Google. Poly9 has worked with some big organizations in the past including Microsoft, Yahoo, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and MSNBC.