Here Are Two Small Companies Apple Bought That No One Knew About

Apple bought two companies this year and no one knew, Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac reports.

Gurman says Apple likely bought mapping startup BroadMap, and Catch, an Evernote-like application.

Gurman, a well-sourced Apple reporter, has been digging around trying to figure out which companies Apple bought this year.

BroadMap sounds like the most interesting.

Gurman writes, "While BroadMap does not have a central feature that could be integrated into Apple's existing product (like transit or indoor mapping functions), BroadMap's experience in sorting data, cartography, points of interest, enterprise integration, geocoding, web development, and mobile application development would be invaluable to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple Services Senior Vice President Eddy Cue's plan to bring Apple Maps up to the expectations of Apple's customers."

It's been a fairly busy year for Apple's M&A group. Here's a short run down of some of its buys:

• It bought social media analytics company Topsy for ~$200 million.
• It bought Passif semiconductor, which makes chips that might go in the iWatch.
• It paid ~$360 million for PrimeSense, which worked on motion-based technology that went into Microsoft's Kinect.
• It bought Embark, which made a good transit directions app.
• It also bought Hopstop, which did transit stuff.
• It bought AlgoTrim, which does mobile data compression.