I routinely come across people who claim they are using google maps when they don't even have it installed on their phone. They call apple maps => google maps.

For majority of those people Apple maps works good enough and for other there is always Google maps. Apple does not have to beat Google maps out of existence, that is not the Apple's objective. Their objective is to make sure they are not dependant on Google for maps. It is easy to build that kind of product.