Rumors, rumors! We usually don’t like to indulge in them and moreover wouldn’t want this blog to become a place of guesses and wishes. However, there sometimes seem to be the kind of “news” that, even though rumors, seem to be quite relevant for iPhone app developers in general – regarding product and marketing. And so we just felt compelled to do it: here’s another round of “Is Apple Taking Over Your App Category?” .

Not to imply that Apple is becoming an app-product company, but it seems to position itself strategically in some app categories. After taking steps to strengthen their gaming know-how, MacRumors.com now reports a job listing in which Apple is specifically looking for a software engineer for it’s built in maps app. Sure, if anything, this should be good news, right? There are so many maps and navigation services out there, Apple strengthening its infrastructure to support these kind of services is great news. Or maybe, they are even taking steps in the Google direction? Or this is all about being able to compete with Google wherever deemed necessary? Apple just recently acquired Placebase, a mapping company.

Before the guessing gets out of hand, we sure hope Apple will use its competence to enable third party developers and not to compete with them. Otherwise, not only would they make for a pretty strong competitor, they would also be able to exclude the services they see as competition or the like.