They don't sell the data, they use it together with the cell tower IDs nearby to allow YOU as a user to use assisted GPS so that the first GPS fix doesn't take up to 20 minutes (if the GPS almanac is extremely outdated or not present).
Thats a huge difference, providing you as a user a valid service with the crowd sourced data or to just give you ads that you will most likely click.

Plus, Apple allows you to opt-out of this completely. The default case is being opt out and one has to explicitly activate location services and click away a pop up that tells one what will happen.



On a completely different note, if you are feared that Apple, Google, Microsoft or whoever collects your position data, think about the following: Your cellphone (no matter if its just a "feature phone" (aka dumb phone) or a smart phone) is always connected to up to five cell towers. Every cell tower has a known position. Its saved into which cell tower you are logged in at which time (otherwise you couldn't make a damn phone call). Not feared yet? Did you know that every provider has a lawful interception interface?