It depends on what you want your application to do. There is Goggle Maps IOS SDK available, which provides basic functionality over google base maps. You can add core location or any other apple libraries to it, and use some cool features as:street map, panoramic view etc. Unfortunately is impossible to use both ESRI and Google SDK in the same app, since they built on the same components. it will throw a linker flag error and will not compile. If your app is designed with more advance functionality like editing, using local tiles or any off line capabilities, you"ll have to stick to more advanced ESRI SDK. So the way you are doing it is the only way(at least that I know) to bring google base maps into an app.
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