Google Maps is set to disappear from the iPhone for the first time since 2007, as manufacturer Apple steps up its efforts to forge ahead in the smartphone market.

Since being launched five years ago, all iPhones have contained a Google Maps app. However, when the new iOS 6 operating system for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches is released later this year, it will instead have an Apple-developed maps app.

Mapping applications have turned into a key battleground in the smartphone industry as Apple and Google fight it out for hundreds of millions of consumers and the advertising potential which map apps contain.

Apple has already started a legal battle with several other firms, such as Google's own Motorola division and Samsung, claiming that their smartphones have borrowed features from the iPhone.

In a further sign of the growing divide, Apple has also announced that Facebook will be built into the iOS 6 rather than the Google Plus social network.