After Google and Facebook, Apple has now released its mobility data trends tool from Apple Maps for 63 countries/regions and major cities "to mitigate the spread of COVID-19". This could "provide helpful insights to local governments and health authorities" and could be used to design "new public policies" by showing changes in people's walking, driving and public transit habits. Unlike mobility data shared by Google that gave information about how popular certain places such as parks and grocery shops have been on the basis of anonymised location data, Apple has collected this data by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions. January 13, 2020, has been treated as the baseline for volume of requests. These data sets are then compared to reflect changes in "volume of people driving, walking or taking public transit". Country data for India and city data for Delhi and Mumbai shows only driving and walking data, but no public transit data. Data for India shows that requests for driving and walking directions started falling dramatically from March 15. Requests for driving directions fell the most (83.7%) on April 5, and for walking directions (77.18%) on April 4. [caption id="attachment_213343" align="aligncenter" width="813"] Apple mobility trends for India. Source: Apple[/caption] In Delhi, requests for directions fell dramatically on March 9 and 10, by almost 35%, but then recovered for a week, to consistently start decreasing from March 17. Requests for driving directions fell the most (87.99%) on April 5, and for walking directions (83.96%) on…
