• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, January 3, 2013

Putting the spotlight on catchy apps, Apple is reportedly in negotiations to buy social GPS-navigation app Waze.

“Waze wants $750M and Apple is willing to do $400M plus $100m in incentives,” TechCrunch writes, citing a source. That’s despite reports that the startup had less than $1 million in revenue, last year. 

“Apple's reported interest in Waze is likely the result of the troubles it's experiencing with Maps, a built-in application in iOS that it launched last year,” writes CNet.

“If there was one thing that hung over Apple's head all year last year, it was the failure of Apple Maps,” Business Insider notes. As such, “Apple is scrambling to fix Apple Maps, and it appears that one piece of the solution is buying mapping startup Waze.”

“The idea of an acquisition makes plenty of sense,” according to Forbes. “As a mapping service, Waze is one of the best out there, yet it doesn’t spend millions sending a team of roving street cars with fish-eye cameras around the world like Google … Waze instead built it maps through good, old-fashioned crowd sourcing.”

But, along with being a crowd-sourced mapping and traffic app, Waze is also a social community, Search Engine Land writes. “It’s not that far removed from Foursquare. That’s what makes any potential acquisition here really interesting.

Meanwhile, “Apple has acquired prominent iOS application developers before to bolster its mobile platform,” Apple Insider recalls. “Most significantly, the company purchased Siri … for about $200 million in 2010.”

Also worth noting, “Waze CEO Noam Bardin has been vocal about the quality of Apple’s mapping solution in the past, BGR reminds us. In fact, Bardin reportedly said that Apple chose some of its mapping partners poorly, resulting in “the lowest, weakest data set.”