Apple had no choice but to ditch Google Maps
Look, this is really simple. Put yourself in the position of Apple execs and think ahead....location services are already a big deal and are going to be huge into the future. At the core of providing locations services is mapping - basically knowing where people are and what is nearby. Google have an excellent maps infrastructure and they've spent a lot of money on developing it over many years http://universal-machine.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/google-ground-truth.html
Apple made a strategic mistake back in 2007 when the iPhone was launched - Google Maps shouldn't have been on it and Apple should have put their own (crappy) maps on it. But they didn't. Now they recognize this error and know they have to get into maps or loose this entire market segment to Google forever. They're not about to do that so they will spend large over the next few years to make Apple Maps as good as Google's. Fortunately Apple have lots of $$$$s in the bank and this will encourage a mapping feature war which is good for us all.
Not many people I suspect will ditch their iPhone because of the iOS 6 map-fail (hint: maps.google.com works just fine in Safari on the iPhone & iPad). So in the long run Apple will have saved their share of locations services.