We’ve seen a great deal of speculation in the past week about Apple buying a company to help it solve its nagging mapping headache. The big rumor, both started and squashed by TechCrunch, was Waze, the crowdsourced mapping and traffic app.

The only problem with that theory? Waze would only slow Apple down.

At least, according to Skobbler’s Marcus Thielking. He’s the cofounder of Skobbler, a spinoff from Navigon that sells one of the top mapping solutions in the world: GPS Navigation 2. It’s got a No. 1 sales ranking in app stores in 20 countries and has sold more than three million copies. It’s also based on OpenStreetMap, the crowdsourced “Wikipedia of maps.”

“There are only two companies that could possibly make sense for Apple to buy,” Thielking said this morning from Europe. “There’s Garmin, which doesn’t use TomTom, on which Apple Maps is built, and there’s TomTom itself. TomTom would be my bet.”

The problem that Apple faces? Buying just any mapping company is not a solution. Apple needs a quick fix — something on the order of months, not years — and buying a company with an incompatible dataset or base technology would ensure a long, painful integration process.

“Purchasing a company that has the talent but does not necessarily solve their issues right away … it could be feasible, but it would probably take a two-year time frame … and that’s not what Apple is looking for,” he told me.

And the core mapping technology is not even what Waze is focused on anymore, according to Thielking, who sees Waze as having pivoted from its initial vision of mapping toward traffic solutions for drivers. That’s significant, because the hard part of mapping is not necessarily the basic grid of the roads: It’s the details in navigation and the richness of local data.

That hard part is why Skobbler uses OpenStreetMap data. With more than a million contributions as of today or tomorrow, the dataset is unsurpassed in some regions — especially in hyperlocal data — and growing quickly in many others. But Apple can’t use OpenStreetMap, according to Thielking, since as a global company it cannot simply focus on the areas where OSM has good data — it needs a global solution with a fairly high global level of quality.

And it needs that solution quickly.

“Owning a digital map these days and especially in the future is an incredibly valuable resource. It’s very hard to copy and very fundamental to everything, particularly in an era of mobile solutions and mobile data,” Thielking says. “That is why Google is doing what they’re doing … and it’s one of the reasons why Apple is in this space.”

Apple wanted to trump Google’s mapping product, but blew it in terms of recognizing the massive complexity of any mapping product, Thielking told me.

All of which means that if there’s any company that Apple might or should be looking to acquire, it would be TomTom.

photo credit: Dunechaser via photopin cc

“You will never need to carry a paper map again,” writes Chikai Ohazama, Director of Product Management, Google Maps for mobile, in the company’s mobile blog. “The ‘Download map area’ lab in Google Maps 5.7 for Android is a step in making that statement true even when you’re offline.”

The “Download map area” lab requires Android 2.1+ and the latest version of Google Maps. You can use it to download any map with a 10-mile radius and navigate without a data signal or data plan. That’s handy because previous versions of Google Maps require an active internet connection in order to download the map data as you go. It could also be especially helpful for traveling abroad. Not only can you get around, you will look less touristy by not waving around a paper map.

Part of the helpfulness comes from Google admitting a weakness. Opening Google Maps for mobile and zooming into a specific area without data coverage or wifi results on the (incredibly frustrating) image to the left. Now you can “Download map area” while you still have access to Wi-Fi or data coverage and get the image on the right.

To access Labs on your phone, press your phone’s menu button once in Google Maps, choose “More” and select Labs. On a tablet, click the menu button in the upper-right corner of Maps. Google says a map download should only take a minute or two.

“This download stores only the base map tiles and the landmarks on the map, so you still need a data connection to see satellite view and 3D buildings, search for Places and get directions,” writes Ohazama.

The “Download map area” feature comes on the heels of  the Google Maps 5.7 for Android release Wednesday, which added a number of additional features: better suggested search results, a photo viewer to Place pages, and Transit Navigation.

Transit Navigation, which is still in beta testing, allows stop-by-stop navigation for public transit in more than 400 cities. Here’s the coolest part: Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it’s time to get off or make a transfer, even if you open another application or put your phone away entirely. Since Transit Navigation relies on GPS signals, it can only be used for above-ground transit. This should also be helpful for people who are hearing impaired, since there’s a vibrating alert.

“Now you can spend more time enjoying the sights out the window and less time worrying about how many stops are left, where you are along the route or whether you missed your stop,” writes Chris Van Der Westhuizen, Software Engineer, on Google’s official blog.

How quaint to think travelers will look out a window and not their Android device.

You can download Google Maps 5.7 for Android here. It requires an Android OS 2.1+ device and works anywhere Google Maps is currently available.

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Doomsday scenarios have been all the rage this year, but one is actually going to happen: Carmageddon — the complete shutdown of the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, starting at 7pm on July 15. During this horrific event, 10 miles of northbound 405 and four miles of southbound 405 will be closed for construction for 53 hours, affecting an estimated 500,000 drivers.

Haven’t had the life-altering experience of driving in L.A. traffic? I could tell you about how it sucks your soul and crushes your dreams, but instead I will describe it with actual statistics. Rush hour in Los Angeles is actually “rush eight hours.” According to the 2010 Urban Mobility Report, published by the Texas Transportation Institute, L.A. has congestion eight hours a day with a commercial cost of $16 per hour for commuters and $106 per hour for trucks/commercial vehicles.

Basically L.A. traffic on a normal day is hell, but Carmageddon weekend will add a 10th circle to Dante’s Inferno.

That’s why Waze is teaming up with L.A.’s KABC News, Channel 7, to help drivers navigate alternate routes during construction. To cover the congestion of arterial streets, KABC will use existing traffic cameras (like the one shown in the image on the right), live reporters and live updates from Waze’s community.

As a former TV news producer, I have two issues with this approach:

1) Most drivers aren’t watching TV while driving (I hope), so this will only help them before they hit the road. Real-time radio would help drivers, but Waze’s VP of Platform & Partnership says this service won’t reach radio listeners.

2) Many weekend drivers in L.A. are tourists who won’t be aware this service exists. While KABC’s coverage of the partnership has been extensive, it’s doubtful tourists have seen it before they reach LAX, hop in their rental cars, and head toward the 405. Locals will certainly benefit from Waze, but tourists may not.

On the plus side, Carmageddon is part of a $1B highway improvement campaign that isn’t expected to be finished until 2013. There will be plenty of opportunities for this partnership to assist local drivers during future road closures.

The partnership with KABC-TV marks Waze’s first large scale-media distribution in the United States. Waze’s citizen traffic technology is also being used by Channel 2, Israel’s largest news network. I’ve added a YouTube clip at the bottom of this story that explains that partnership in depth.

Founded in 2009, Waze now claims 4.5 million drivers use its service. The company launched its service in Spain and the United Kingdom last month. In December 2010 the company raised $25m from original investors Blue Run Ventures, Magma and Vertex (Waze received an initial $12 million from those investors in 2009), along with “new strategic investors” including Qualcomm Ventures.

Waze is available on the Apple AppStore, the Android Market Place, the Nokia Ovi Store, RIM’s App World and Windows Market or download from m.Waze.com.

VentureBeat is keeping a close eye on Waze since the company showed up in Apple’s iOS legal disclaimer, which hints Apple might be working on its own mapping solution, despite a renewed partnership with Google Maps.

Here’s the video I mentioned above. About half-way you’ll see the bit about Waze and Israel’s Channel 2.