Lumatic Shut Down, Fast

Following up on The Failures of the iOS6 Maps Application in which I hoped that Lumatic would be able to provide maps with transit to San Diego.

Well, they did, for a while. I used it several times. Then, 2 days ago, they shut down, immediately. Here’s the email:

from: The City Maps iPhone app <feedback@lumatic.com>
date: Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 11:38 AM
subject: City Maps is shutting down its service

Dear City Maps App User:

We thank you for being with us over the last year as we’ve built City Maps into the navigation and transit tool that it is today. It has been a privilege to have you.

Unfortunately, despite our passion and commitment to our product, we will be shutting the service down effective immediately. We succeeded in growing a core base of loyal users and building a product that we love, but we have not been able to secure the funding we need to survive commercially.

As of August 4, 2013, City Maps WILL NO LONGER BE OPERATIVE.
Please be assured that any account information we have for you will be safely deleted.

Feel free to contact us at feedback@lumatic.com with any questions.

Thanks again for your support,
The City Maps team
Copyright © 2013 Lumatic Inc, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you are a City Maps app user and have created an account with us.
Our mailing address is:
Lumatic Inc
480 2nd Street
Suite 203
San Francisco, CA 94107

There’s a blog post, though I’m not sure how long it will be up given it’s misformatted.

Lumatic is very sad to announce that we've had to shut down our City Maps app. Thanks to all of our users and fans. http://t.co/xJskJHJjQG

— Lumatic City Maps (@LumaticCityMaps) August 6, 2013

My guess is Google’s Maps app, which is free, must’ve been too much competition.