That's what I keep thinking every time someone talks about Google getting beaten in maps. They've had the "eye candy maps app" available for download for seven years now.
That said, having some competition in the market is a good thing. I do wish more of it was concentrated on free products like OpenStreetMap though.
There's a distinct difference, as far as I know: the C3 solution can do large-scale automated rendering of 3D terrain based on aerial photography, and Google Earth's geomodeling is done by hand. That means that Apple can, effectively, render the entire world in 3D if they choose to, limited only by money and computing resources. Google is limited by manpower.
http://www.slashgear.com/apple-acquires-c3-technologies-for-...
It looks a lot like Google Earth. Google can just integrate Google Earth into the mobile maps to compete. They've already done it on the web version.