2010

Harsha Vardhan Madiraju

http://twitter.com/harsham

8/26/2010

Comparison of online mapping services in India

Table of Contents Genesis of online mapping ............................................................................................................. 4

Web based Maps ............................................................................................................................. 5

Purpose ........................................................................................................................................ 5

Architecture ................................................................................................................................. 5

The inherent problem ................................................................................................................. 6

Web Mapping Transformation ................................................................................................... 6

AJAX Technology......................................................................................................................... 6

Image Tile Servers ....................................................................................................................... 7

Mapping APIs & Mashups ........................................................................................................... 8

Digital Earths ............................................................................................................................... 9

Mobile Map Applications ........................................................................................................... 10

Neogeography & VGI ................................................................................................................... 11

Satellite Data and Public Access ................................................................................................ 12

Online Mapping in India ............................................................................................................ 13

Comparison of features of various mapping services in India ..................................................... 15

Map Content ............................................................................................................................... 17

3D Views/ Data ........................................................................................................................... 18

Aerial Imagery and Street View ................................................................................................. 19

Search and Maps......................................................................................................................... 21

Navigation and Driving Direction ............................................................................................ 22

Inconsistent map data & Navigation .................................................................................... 22

Live Traffic Information ............................................................................................................ 23

Business/ Enterprise services .................................................................................................... 24

Usage of Online mapping in government ................................................................................ 24

Credibility of the data ............................................................................................................ 24

Sensitivity of Data .................................................................................................................. 25

APIs and online mapping in India ............................................................................................ 25

Content and Crowdsourcing ..................................................................................................... 26

Privacy ........................................................................................................................................ 29

Comparison of features of Digital Earth services for India .......................................................... 31

Bhuvan – The Indian Digital Earth ............................................................................................ 33

Data on Bhuvan ...................................................................................................................... 33

Other features and limitations .............................................................................................. 34

Google Earth ...............................................................................................................................35

NASA World Wind .................................................................................................................... 36

Mobile Mapping Services in India ................................................................................................ 38

Comparison of mobile mapping services in India ....................................................................... 39

Free Mobile Maps Vs PNDs ....................................................................................................... 41

Data ............................................................................................................................................ 42

Features ...................................................................................................................................... 42

Other Features/ capabilities ..................................................................................................... 43

The Way ahead .............................................................................................................................. 44

References ...................................................................................................................................... 45

Genesis of online mapping The web mapping trend that we see today dates back to 1993 with the advent of Xerox PARC

Map Viewer1 later lead by ArcIMS in 19922, GeoMedia WebMap 1.0 and Autodesk MapGuide3

during 1996. These services were aimed at providing static maps, and lacked the usability

phenomenon, thus leaving very little scope for user interaction and experience, primarily

attributed with the limitations inherent in the web technologies during that time.

While all the above applications and related services were primarily to serve map data over the

web, the real transformation in this space came with UMN MapServer developed out of the

NASA to deliver remote sensing data during 1997 and later the TerraServer4 out in late 1997 to

serve aerial images – which was a joint effort by USGS, Microsoft and HP.

Though they were commercial implementations for web mapping, the applications built out

on these were meant for the sole purpose of serving map content/ data over web and the

implementations were not meant for mass consumption. The real mass utilisation of mapping

services can be attributed to Mapquest5 – the online Address Matching and Routing Service

with mapping output.

The next big revolution came during 2003, when NASA released the World Wind application

that brought out its Earth Observation (EO) data in to the public domain with a user friendly

user interface. While it was still not that popular and widely spread phenomenon, the actual

revolution came in 2005 with the release of Google Maps and later Google Earth. This lead to

the phenomenon we have seen called, “My Home from Space” where the users started to mark

the location of their homes.

A noteworthy observation would be that the revolution of maps was not caused by someone

with from the GIS/ EO domain, but from the IT Space – The Google. This phenomenon led

other giants, namely Microsoft & Yahoo to follow.

While it might be thought that Google has really started this mapping phenomenon in 2005, it

would be surprising to learn that the domain http://maps.yahoo.com was active since

December 19976 and it already started to provide maps upon user queries based over Address,

City or State.

1 http://www2.parc.com/istl/projects/mapdocs/

2 http://www.gisdevelopment.net/technology/gis/techgi0041b.htm

3 http://mapguide.osgeo.org/

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA

5 http://www.mapquest.com/

6 http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://maps.yahoo.com

Figure 1: Yahoo Maps page as on May 05, 1998

Looking at Web archives, Microsoft’s http://maps.live.com service seems to have started up

during December 2005 nearly 10 months after the existence of Google’s

http://maps.google.com which online from February 2005.

Web based Maps

Purpose

The real purpose in implementing web mapping lies behind the philosophy of bringing out the

previously inaccessible data to be available for broadly consumption.

Architecture

The concept behind the web maps has been taken from the famous client-server or n-tier

architecture consisting of client, application server and a data serveri. In this kind of

framework, the user requests for a map from the server, and then the server passes this

request to a web mapping server which in turn reaches a data server containing the map data.

The map data fetched from this server is then sent back to the users screen or browser.

Figure 2: A schematic representation of web mapping in the case of a client-server architecture model

The inherent problem Web-based mapping applications are powerful but, it becomes difficult to set up and maintain

this kind of a setup especially for smaller organisations, mainly due to the high level technical

skills required for maintaining a web server, a mapping server/program and management of

the underlying map data.

Web Mapping Transformation

Traditional Internet GIS applications and Web-based mapping tools are suffer from slow

response times and lack of high resolutions imagery layers because of the limitation of image

data sizes and the slow client/ server communications. The AJAX technologies and image

tiling techniques7 lead to a change that improved the system performance and response time

of internet GIS applications significantly.

Another significant transformation came from availability of Application Programming

Interfaces (APIs) from the online mapping service providers, which led to the wider adoption

of these services. These services took one more step to adopt Digital Earths and later enter the

mobile space. Last but not the least, this technological transformation in the age of Web 2.0

and the participatory approach as part of this phenomenon lead to a wider accepted flavour of

Geography now known to be Neogeography.

AJAX Technology

One important aspect of AJAX is the function of XMLHttpRequest (XHR) that came to the

rescue of web mapping applications that need to serve very large data sets. XMLHttpRequest

can update a portion of the web page without reloading the contents of the entire web page.

This function also called “refresh without reload”. XHR is the major communication

mechanism behind the web servers and the client browsers. Therefore, the performance of

web mapping has improved significantly on client-side applications with the AJAX technology.

7 http://www.gisdevelopment.net/technology/gis/techgis_002pf.htm

In the 1990s, web browsers and web sites were based on static pages and each user action

required that the page be re-loaded from the server (or a new page loaded). This process is not

efficient, as reflected by the user experience (all page content disappears then reappears, etc.).

The utility of background HTTP requests to the server and asynchronous web technologies

remained fairly obscure until it started appearing in full scale online applications such as

Outlook Web Access (2000), Oddpost (2002), and later, notably Google made a wide

deployment of Ajax with Gmail (2004) and Google Maps (2005) 8

Google was apparently the first to realize this with Gmail and Google Maps, where they built

applications that took advantage of this technology to provide a user interface that was much

more like a web application. For example Google Maps lets you drag a map around and, as you

do so, automatically downloads the parts of it you want to look at inline, without making you

wait for a whole new page to download.9

Image Tile Servers

The second major technical change came in terms of delivering image on the client side. This

introduction of tiled images improved the application performance by allowing the

application to process an image region with a number of tiles without bringing the entire

image into computer memory. Currently most of the online mapping services are providing

data in this form, which is based on the Pyramidal Image Model.

Figure 3: Three-layer Tile-based Pyramidal Image Model

For example, Google Maps implements this model in which the smallest image tile is of

256x256 pixels. The following image shows one tile representing the entire earth in a single

time at the lowest zoon level (level 0). As the zoom level increases, the numbers of tiles

increase by value of 4N, where N represents the Zoom Level. For example if zoom level is 4, the

same image will be represented by 16 tiles.

8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

9 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ajaxhistory

Mashups are a new breed of applications

that combine(s) data from more than one

source and help in making out an

integrated tool (for example combining

Google Maps with Classifieds

information). Thus mashups help in

creating/envisaging new web services for

your personal and commercial use

Figure 4: Map at Zoom Level 0. Therefore is represented in one tile

Figure 5: Map at Zoom Level 4, where the image gets divided in to 4

4, i.e. 16

tiles10

Mapping APIs & Mashups

API’s are codes that provide an interface between the application/program and the requests

made by the user accessing the application. For

example the computers we use are a

collection of API’s that perform their

individual functions, and the standard

applications that users build upon,

depending on the need the required API’s

are accessed by a programme currently

running. In the web for example the Google

Maps API provides developers the Google

Maps interface in web applications and also

provides various utilities for manipulating the

maps11.

According to Programmableweb.com12 (as on Wednesday, 30 June 2010), there are 122 APIs

listed under the Mapping category and Google Maps is listed #1 under the Top APIs for

Mashups13. With 1988 mashups created using this API14, this usage has taken over the APIs

from some very popular web services such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. While

Microsoft Virtual Earth stands #8 with 175 mashups, Yahoo Maps has taken #13 with 127

mashups to its credit.

10

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2/overlays.html#Tile_Overlays 11 http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/global/2007/november/5052.htm

12 http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?apicat=Mapping

13 http://www.programmableweb.com/apis

14 http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?sort=mashups

Figure 6: Google Maps enjoys the #1 position, in terms of number of Mashups created according to programmableweb.com

As on 30 June 2010, the mashups related to Gulf Oil Spill are very popular. Some of the

interesting mashups created using the mapping APIs can be found under

http://www.programmableweb.com/tag/mapping/1?sort=popular

Digital Earths

Ten years ago, the then US Vice-President Al Gore articulated a vision of a virtual globe and

baptised it the “Digital Earth” - as a multi-resolution, three-dimensional representation of the

planet that would make it possible to find, visualise, and make sense of vast amounts of geo-

referenced information on the physical and social environment. NASA’s 'World Wind' was

among the first of the DEs released in 2004. Later was the entry from Google Earth in 2005

followed by Microsoft Virtual Earth during 2006.

GIS as a way to organise information is not new, and we have seen developments happening in

this area in the form of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). Another example in this category is

the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which started with the aim to

promote scientific connections between the observing systems. Though these are not in

common use, they are popular within the GI community and other stakeholders involved with

the creation of SDIs. They are managed by government agencies, and are not widely publicised

nor are they aimed at mass consumption with most of the datasets under the restrictions of a

legal framework.

The digital earths are aimed at publishing and monetising the data and designed for public,

with few restrictions on data. These public domain offerings, most of them 'free', evinced great

interest due to the high resolution imagery. Concepts like ‘Locate your House!’ later grew into

the idea of crowd sourcing, also referred to as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI).

The Vespucci Initiative published paper on Next-Generation Digital Earth15 described this

phenomenon of which some very important points to be noted is:

Not one Digital Earth, but multiple connected globes/infrastructures addressing the

needs of different audiences, problems

Allowing search through time/ space

Supporting visualisation of abstract concepts and data

Engraining, interactive, exploratory, for learning and for multidisciplinary education

and science

Mobile Map Applications

With the evolution of new generation mobile devices/ smart phones, especially the 3G mobile

devices and services, we started to see intuitive features in which embedded GPS with map

based applications has been one of the notable trends. According to Dr. David Maguire,

Mobile mapping application is not a conventional GIS modified to operate on mobile devices,

but a system built using a fundamentally new paradigm.ii

As per the recently published figures (As on June 2010), use of mapping applications on mobile

phones grew 44% in the year between April 2009 and April 2010. And if we look closer in to

the usage criteria, is as given below:

Figure 7: Category of Mobile Mapping Users

A more convincing piece of evidence related to growth of mobile mapping market can be seen

when one looks at the growth pattern of the Mobile Map Apps. This growth is phenomenal,

15

http://ijsdir.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php/ijsdir/article/viewFile/119/99

which is at 93% (from April 2009 to 2010) iii, which is equally competing with other application

categories like search, photos, videos etc. as shown in the figure below.

Figure 8: Growth of usage of mobile applications during April 2009 and 2010

Neogeography & VGI

As described in Wikipedia, Neogeography (new geography) is the usage of geographic tools

and techniques for personal and community activities, in which the user is a non-expert group

of users. Thus neogeography can be looked at a way in which the usage of geographical tools

which were limited to the GIS community makes a way in to the mainstream.

This trend has started with the wider availability of mobile devices enabled with GPS units.

This subsequently gave a wider reach for these geospatial tools which lead to increased use

and integration with applications that were till then seemed to be non-spatial. Thus the

phenomenon of geospatial started to be seen everywhere, the popular way being geo-tagging

of photos.

However, prominent personalities from the geospatial community have expressed strong

reservations against this term, which did not involve use of accurate and complex spatial tools,

which lead to a new area/ term now known as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI).

VGI is the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided

voluntarily by individuals. Some examples of this phenomenon are Wikimapia,

OpenStreetMap, and Google MyMaps.16

16

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteered_Geographic_Information

Mapping in India

Availability of maps in India has always been the biggest debate in national and international

forums. Primary reason being the Mapping Policy and the scrutinising agency Ministry of

Defence (MOD) as the GIS community refers to, map data was not always easy to get.

However, the Map Policy 2005 has brought out two series of Maps Defence Series Maps

(DSMs)- and Open Series Maps (OSMs), and the later being the preferred choice for general

public which excludes the civil and military Vulnerable Areas and Vulnerable Points

(VA’s/VP’s). But the most obvious features went missing from these maps are details like

contours and content undergoing dilution of accuracy. In one way, the maps are still

controlled by these agencies which are funded by public money. After 2005, the National

Mapping Agency SOI has started to bring out the OSMs, however this project is still not

complete for the whole country till date.

Another major factor is the wider availability of maps at ease. If someone wants to have access

these maps even for a very simple use like navigation it is not possible as there is no online/

digital mapping source till date. Even if some agency wants to use these is bind to the license

agreement.

Thus it can be seen that the mapping has been under the control of government in India.

However, during late 80’s this practice has started to change. As the private industry started to

enter this domain to provide services, the data creation business which was primarily the

governments business slowly started to shift its balance toward the private. These companies

also started to develop map content, in the form of tourist maps and maps for various user

agencies according their requirements. However, their data was still restricted to the

particular user or project, with the restrictions of Map Policy on providing data to public.

Satellite Data and Public Access

Another major source of data in any geospatial application is undoubtedly the satellite data. In

the Indian context, the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSC) [Previously National Remote

Sensing Agency (NRSA)] is the designated agency to supply the satellite data in India. The

supply of data from this agency is bounded by the Remote Sensing Data Policy (RSDP).

Though India has been one of the leading players in the remote sensing space, the availability

of the data to the public with in India, is again bound by the mandatory clearances from

Ministry of Defence (MOD). Also, as per the data policy, the data of resolutions better than

5.8m and above would undergo a wider screening and scrutiny, which virtually leave the

possibility of availability of such data to the public. Another major factor is the absence of any

mechanism for disseminating the data to public. This has been the phenomenon till 2008/9,

where no data from NRSC was available for public access.

Low LBS adoption in India is also blamed on a lack of publicly available, standardized

spatial information unlike in the US.iv

Online Mapping Services started up with the aim to bring out the data at higher resolutions

for public, also can be found to have a major impact in India. This is evident from the fact that

this phenomenon of where are My Home/ Rooftop really saw its success, and this is obvious

through Google Maps and Wikimapia, where a lot of users started to mark their home

locations and share it with public. Further popularity can be seen through the Map Maker

initiative by Google, where the people started to create their neighbourhood data referring the

Satellite Imagery.

This has really brought in some change in the attitude of the Indian agency NRSC, and they

started their own Digital Earth initiative called Bhuvan, and started providing the unrestricted

data to public. However, that data is al resolutions less than 5.6m, again restricted by the data

policy. However, it can be said that the increasing popularity of online mapping might be

looked at one of the reasons for the Indian agency making its data publicly accessible, which

has brought out a change in the attitude of the public agencies that are aimed to provide data.

Online Mapping in India

While it would be extremely difficult to bring out the chronology of Online Mapping/ Web

GIS in India, it can be said that there has been adoption at appreciable scale. To mention a few

and significant examples, the usage has been seen in the areas of e-Governance and local

planning; Environment Planning and Management; Real Estate, etc. Especially during 2009 –

2010, there has been a significant move in the areas of Municipal GIS especially for property

tax assessment. Another acclaimed application has been the online tsunami early warning

system which also won various national awards.

However, like with the rest of the world, the wider adaptation of the online mapping services

especially Google Maps has started to take place since 2006. This move brought out a wider

interest especially from a business perspective and to date there are around eight mapping

services, which is significant number for a country like India, where the mapping

phenomenon did not seem to be popular, till recently.

Not only that India has seen to have the mapping services, but also is boasted to have its own

version of Digital Earth named Bhuvan17, launched by the National Remote Sensing Centre

(NRSC). Even the availability of maps for the mobile applications has taken a significant move.

In the Indian context, some of the fastest growing website categories during the past year

includes - Maps (up by 64 percent), Sports (up by 60 percent), Entertainment – Movies (up by

55 percent), and Finance – News/Research (up 52 percent).v. Clearly, mapping services

popularity grew, which substantiate the claim that phenomenon of online mapping is

becoming popular in India.

The following table summarises the list of various mapping services being made available/

relevant for India in the form of web based mapping applications, Digital Earths and Mobile

Map Applications:

Online Mapping Apps

1. Yahoo Maps India - http://in.maps.yahoo.com/

2. Google Maps India - http://maps.google.co.in/

3. Bing Maps for India - http://www.bing.com/mapindia/?FORM=Z9LH3

4. Map My India Maps - http://maps.mapmyindia.com/

17

http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/global/2009/september/22.htm

5. SatNav Roads of India Map portal - http://www.roadsofindia.com/

6. Rediff Maps Beta- http://maps.rediff.com/

7. Open Street Maps India - http://openstreetmap.in/

8. Wikimapia - http://www.wikimapia.org Digital Earths

1. Bhuvan - http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/ 2. Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/ 3. NASA World Wind - http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

Mobile map Apps 1. Google Maps Mobile -

http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html#p=default 2. MapMyIndia mobile apps - http://inav.mapmyindia.com/ 3. Nokia Maps India - http://www.nokia.co.in/explore-services/nokia-maps/maps-

main 4. SatGuide - http://www.satguide.in/

Table 1: Current mapping services available for use in India

The next part of this document is an attempt to categorize the functionalities and bring out a

matrix based comparison on the functionalities of these applications.

Comparison of features of various mapping services in India Services

Features

BIG Maps

Alpha

Bing Maps for

India

Google Maps

India

Map My India

Maps

Nokia Ovi Maps Open Street

Maps India

Rediff Maps

Beta

SatNav Roads

of India Map

portal

Wikimapia Yahoo Maps

India

Views

Map View Y Y*vi Y Y Y* With Land Base Y Y Y Y* Y

Satellite View N Y Y N Y* N N N Y* Y

Terrain View N N Y N Y N N N Y* N

Map + Satellite View

N Y Y N Y N N N Y* Y

Bird’s Eye View N N N N N N N N N N

Panoramic View/ Street View

N N N N N N N N N N

3D View/ Data N N* not for India Y* N Y* N N N N N

Vernacular Maps N N N N N Y* Y N Y* Y

Navigation

Overview map pane

N Y Y Y Y N Y Y N Y

Draggable Maps Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y* Y

Shortcut keys Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y* Y

Search

Search Options Basic Search POI Search

Business Collections Locations

Locations Business User-

generated content

Related Maps Real Estate

Location Local POI

Address Business Category

N N*

Address Street Name Business/

Facilities Area Name City

All City Coordinates Categorical

Address Business

Value Added Information

N Y Y Y Y N N N Y* (Categorical, Wikipedia, Panaromia)

Y

Map Directions

Driving Directions Y Y Y Y Y N N Y N Y

Reverse Route N Y Y N N N Y N Y

Walking Route N N N N N N N N N Y

Transit Route N N Y N N N N N N Y

Value added information in directions

N N N N Y* - Temperature N N N N Y

Other Features

Creating Maps Y Y Y N N Y** N Y Y N

Sharing Maps N Y Y Y N Y N N Y Y

Email N Y Y Y Y N Y N Y Y

Print N Y Y Y Y N Y Y N Y

Embedding Maps N Y Y Y N Y N N Y Y

Live Traffic N N N* N N* N N N N N*

Mobile option N Yes - Available but not as a software

Yes for free Yes – but at a price

Yes – for Nokia S630 phones

N N Y – at a price N Y

Business/ Enterprise services

N Y Y Y N N** N Y N Y

API Y

Y*vii viii

Y Y N Y* N N Yix Y

API pricing N Yx

Y Y N N N N N N

Other related services

No

Map Cruncher Beta for Bing Maps

Bing Maps-3DVIA MapPoint

Virtual Earth Photosynth Geosynth

Map Maker Local

Business Listing

Latitude Map Your

World

Map your India

Ovi Maps mobile

Rediff Local

Search

Tracking of Child & Family Tracking; Personnel, Assets & Logistics; Lost Mobiles

Citizen Mapper

None Placemaker Fire Eagle GeoPlanet

Map content & Updation

Content Partners Reliance

ADAG

Automotive Navigation Data (AND)

Navteq Indiacomxi

CE Info Systems* till 2009

N – creates its own content

Navteq Crowdsourcing CE Info Systems

ML Infomap N

Google Maps Crowdsourcing

Y* does not mention clearly however CE Info is providing data for India

Updation Timeframe

N N N N N N N N N

Crowdsourcing/ VGI

N Y* Y Y Y* Through ‘Good Things’

Y N Y Y Y*

Policies/ Terms & Conditions

Service Usage Policy

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Yxii (Guided by Google Maps Terms)

Y

Data quality policy N N N*xiii N N N N N N N/A

Data updation Policy

N N N N N N N N N* Y*

Table 2: Comparison of features of various online mapping applications currently active for India

Map Content Map content remains the central part of these services, with data available at various levels and

details across these services. An interesting observation on the mapping data, is that the Ovi Maps

service, even provides land base data.

Here the availability of up to date content for these services remains a challenge. For this many of

the mapping services rely on third party content providers for the same. The table below provides

the details of the companies providing map content to the corresponding mapping service:

Mapping Service Content Partners

Google Maps ML Info Map, 2008xiv Tele Atlas, 2010 Google India 2010, majorly through Corwdsourcing*

Yahoo Maps CE Info Systems Rediff Maps ML Info Map Open Street Maps Corwdsourcing* BIG Maps Alpha Reliance ADAG

MapMyIndia Maps CE Info Systems

While having a third party content provider in case of lack of reliable content has been the

phenomenon with most of the services, Google broke the chain by started to rely on crowdsourced

data made through Google MapMaker.

For the content providers, this is a great business model, where their data sets saw such large scale

utilisation across the country, which was not possible earlier due to non-availability of such wider

distribution medium.

When it comes to map content for a country like India where the language varies with a state,

availability of maps in local language becomes an important feature. In India, most of the officially

recognised languages are also the widely spoken languages around the world. Instead of such wide

user base, the availability of online content in these languages still remains a challengexv.

When ML Infomap sourced data to Rediff Maps, a question was raised by everyone in the

Press that, “Why does the world, especially Indian subcontinent need another mapping site

when we have Google and Yahoo maps?” Answering this question Dr Manosi Lahiri, MD and

CEO, ML Infomap says, “The demand for digital maps in India is limited. Except for a few

sectors, maps as a support to any form of decision making are absent. Interest in online maps

in India is new among consumers and most are still from the largest metropolises.”

Taking a different stance, KM Jagadeesh, Vice-President-GIS, Reliance Tech Services says,

“Demand of digital maps in India is increasing exponentially. This is due to the use of digital

maps in ICT applications in various segments like utilities and infrastructure. The

developments in hardware (computing speeds, capacity to handle large volumes), software,

devices, space technology, communication technology, survey technologies have enabled

increased use of digital maps.”1

And in online map portals, only Yahoo Maps is providing the vernacular contentxvi, for this Yahoo

has made a special tab ‘Vernacular’ as a feature. While others like Wikimapia, OSM India depends

on public to translate/ provide map content in local languages.

Figure 7: Vernacular Map content in Yahoo Maps India

3D Views/ Data

We have been seeing the phenomenon of maps, constantly improving the feature sets. One of

the features been getting relevance is 3D data, in the online mapping services. For India,

Google Maps and Ovi Maps have started to provide such data for places for places of

importance/ interest.

Looking at such the availability of 3D data in the Indian context, it would be interesting to

understand the need for such data for consumption of public. This falls under the ‘chicken and

egg problem’, where it would be difficult to understand if the demand is there or the demand

is being created. However, looking at the availability of mapping services itself, it can be seen

that providing such features will ultimately create interest leading to increase in the demand

for such content.

Figure 8: Partial 3D data for Charminar area, Hyderabad, India as seen in Ovi maps

Figure 9: Partial 3D data for Charminar area, Hyderabad, India as seen in Google maps. The 3D models are takend from the Sketchup wear house, another service from Google.

Aerial Imagery and Street View

The online mapping has moved to the next phase, where we are seeing technologies like Street

view from Google, and Photosynth from Microsoft getting integrated with the mapping

services.

Also, aerial or ortho imagery is widely taking the place of remote sensing data, with a view to

provide much better resolutions. While Microsoft’s Vexcel technologies have really helped

Bing Maps to integrate aerial imagery in to Bing Maps, Google has just started to provide

aerial imagery from June 2010.

However, again it seems to be long time when such data will be available within the country

again restricted by the policies of the land. Still, Google Maps has taken an alternative option

to street view option by stitching photos of the same location from multiple sources, and

Microsoft already doing it, while it has not yet integrated this feature it into Bing Maps.

Figure 10: Google Street View alternative for India, by combining multiple images of the same location

There has been an initiative by a company in India to productise and sell data on the lines of

Google Street View, however it is subjected to their Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) currently

and hence, not further information can be provided. However, this is a sign that data on the

models of Street View and Photosynth are going to be the generation data sets in Geospatial, and

India has started a move towards that, though not public and not on a large scale.

Figure 11: India Gate, New Delhi as seen on Microsoft Photosynth. This is also created through crowdsorucing, by general public

Search and Maps Internet based search is one of the most important aspects, that Indians are heavily relying on.

While the post online mapping era services, seems to have over looked the location aspect of

search that is quite changing. Today, display of map along with search result on the top has

become a default feature of most of the search engines.

The power of local content along with maps is evident from the view of Dr. Vincent Tao of

Microsoft Virtual Earth (now Bing Maps), who during 2006 said ”VE’s programme vision is to

enable the connection between people to local content, people to local business and people to

people locally. This allows users to access not just maps and directions; but much more rich

information about the community they live in, about the places they want to visit and about the

events they want to join.”xvii

Referring to the above table, it can been seen that there is a provision for searching along with

locating business listings and 5 out of 8 mapping services providing this feature. Additionally,

search features are also available to POIs/ Locations, User generate content etc. The business

listing feature allows individuals/ companies to add their business data with location to maps and

this also forms a part of the local content. The image below taken at a local restaurant in

Hyderabad shows the publicity of Google about the Google Local service, that lists business on

maps. In the inset is the Ad run by Google as a part of its Ad campaign in India. This brings out the

seriousness of these services and its importance to the local businesses.

Figure 12: Ad of Google Places on a local restaurant in Hyderabad. (Inset: Google ad online)

Thus various services built are combining the power of maps with search and local content and few

examples are below:

Integration of Local business listings with Google Maps.

Integration of Real Estate Search with in Google maps (as a Tab feature)

Integration of Yahoo maps with Yahoo! Local

Magicbriks.com a famous property search engine portal has integrated itself with MapMyIndia Maps

First Indian Local Search Engine, OnYoMo – Short form for On Your Move – brings our Local search with maps

Rediff Local has integrated Rediff Maps

The data that is getting integrated in to the mapping services is being provided by the Local

Content Partners for the map service providers. This is one of the important business areas, where

the local (text) based content is getting integrated with maps.

Navigation and Driving Direction

Another evident feature of the online mapping services has been providing driving directions.

This feature is available in 5 out of the 8 mapping services. While basic turn-by-turn driving

directions have been the most common feature, Google and Yahoo have added the feature of

providing Transit information (local trains/ metro rails, bus). Additionally, Yahoo also

provides Value added information in directions like related to business like petrol stations,

banks, ATMs, hospitals etc. on the driving route.

However, these services do not provide real time driving directions and hence their use as

navigation aid is ruled out with the exception of Google Maps Mobile application.

Inconsistent map data & Navigation

When it comes to driving directions in India many streets don't have names, which of course

can make giving driving directions pretty confusing. To overcome this problem a company

named RouteGuru, that provides online driving directions devised a solution which they

called 'landmark based' directions.

Figure 13: A typical route in RouteGuru will say something like "take the left after restaurant X, pass by theatre Y on the right etc.".

Google have launched a 'landmark' system for driving directions on Google Maps in India.

Google are using a new algorithm to determine which landmarks are most useful for

navigation, based on importance and closeness to the turns that you need to make. They then

include these landmarks in driving directions.xviii

Live Traffic Information

When it comes to live traffic information, this still remains a grey area in India because of the

prime reason that the traffic systems in India are not fully integrated with sensors and cameras

that can provide a clear picture of traffic with in a city. Hence the integration of traffic data

with mapping services is not yet seen in India.

Alternatives from companies like Google have the feature to collect road congestion data from

crowdsourcingxix, yet its implementation has not yet taken place in India.

However, there has been a push in this area from a start-up named mapunityxx that is

providing Live Traffic Information using its own online mapping service. The Urban Transport

Information System (UTIS) brings together several types of inputs - teledensity data from

mobile telecom tower networks, video images from police cameras, location-tracking of buses

and taxis - to create real-time knowledge of traffic conditions in cities.

Figure 14: Hyderabad Traffic Information System, providing the traffic status at major junctions in the city of Hyderabad, India

In this area, there can be a wider interest and availability of data might be possible in near

future. Especially with initiatives like live textual based information being provided online and

through services like Twitter, marriage of the mapping API’s with such information to

generate traffic congestion maps, might be possible very soon.

Business/ Enterprise services Till now, the application and utility of these services has only been discussed in the general

usage context, where the services are provided to the public for free. The next level lies in the

enterprise/ business services where these services are being provided at a premium to the

business users. While it is really difficult to understand the target application areas, where

services like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are generating revenues, a little idea can be

gathered after referring to the website of the Indian counterparts like SatNav and

MapMyIndia. This brings to the point that these companies are targeting areas like:

Vehicle Tracking applications for retail, logistic companiesxxi,xxii

Stores, where the Store Locator feature is being providedxxiii

Companies/ Organisations for tracking their field staff, assetsxxiv

Some interesting offerings like tracking family & children, lost mobiles is also seenxxv

Usage of Online mapping in government Thought the private/ corporate sector is seen as a direct target for these applications, their

application in government projects is not seen. Some of the reasons that might be attributed

as possible reasons for the government organisations not using services like Google Maps in

India are discussed below.

Credibility of the data

This is one of the important areas where most of the mapping services have failed. More often

they don’t have the official (certified by government agencies) boundary data at country, state,

district and sub-district levels. In places they have the data; they tend to misrepresent the

boundaries.

One of the most widely discussed topics is Google misrepresenting the India – Pakistan, and

India- China borders. This went to the level that Google completely removed Arunachal

Pradesh, an official state from the Indian map and represented it to be a part of Chinaxxvi. This

misrepresentation can be seen in the Table below.

Arunachal Pradesh show on Google Maps China

edition http://ditu.google.com

Arunachal Pradesh as seen in Google Maps

India http://maps.google.co.in.

Arunachal Pradesh on the international edition at

http://maps.google.com.

Sensitivity of Data

Also, because of its restrictive nature and policies discussed previously, Indian government

prohibits providing high resolution and sensitive data online. Since the launch of online

mapping services, it has at various levels and times indicated to such services about showing

the areas that are considered to be sensitive in the satellite data. When it comes to general

practice within the government, they tend to remove data related to sensitive places when

making the data public. When it comes to services like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo which

provide this sensitive data online, they tend to host their services from outside India, and

hence tend not to follow the Laws of land prevailing in India.

Though Indian government has been brining again and again this issue to services like Google,

these issues escalated with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in India, where it has been found

that the Terrorists have used Google Maps to plan the attack sensitive locations.xxvii

Looking at such incidents, online mapping services have coming under scrutiny of the

government and made them infamous in the federal circles. These reasons can be seen as the

major factors restricting their usage. Having up-to-date information is also another major

cause, for them being not used in place of base map information. Even in case of enterprise

services, the data turn outs to be the same data that is provided to public under free use,

which has the characteristics described above. Hence, the usage of these services by paying

enterprise options is not seen much.

APIs and online mapping in India

As discussed previously, APIs have contributed a greater part in transforming the maps and

taking them to the next level. While there are companies using Maps APIs in India in various

projects, it becomes extremely difficult to track, with no public data available on this usage.

The only source of data available that was available is through Programmable webxxviii, which

has 7 Mashups listed which use Google Maps in6 and Bing Maps in 1 of the mashups.

When Talking of API, it is interesting to observe that Bing is the service, which has a separate

mapping and API service for India and China.xxix The maps in the China and India APIs are

more detailed for their respective countries and haven’t been integrated into the Bing Maps

[rest of world] API because of the requirements to host the data within the countries’

respective borders. The India specific API can be accessed at

http://dev.mapindia.live.com/sdk/

When enquired Microsoft about this special setup, it gave this explanation

bingmaps

@harsham If you want the best data, get it from the source, apply geopolitical standards & host within country boundaries. ^CP

11:03 PM Jul 9th via TweetDeck in reply to harshamRetweeted by you

Content and Crowdsourcing

As discussed previously, Mapping services heavily reply on local partners for content. Indian

companies are involved in this business of providing map content. While commercial ways of

obtaining data is the most straight forward way for services dealing with content, this data

seems to be not suiting the local conditions, especially when data has to be frequently

updated. Such problems are being addressed through the crowdsourcing phenomenon, and

India is one of those countries where companies like Google are heavily relying on public to

produce map content.

In the words of Lalitesh Katragadda, a key person behind Google Map Maker xxx, most of

Maps for India by Google are done using Map Maker. This way, Google has changed its

strategy of obtaining map data from commercial sources, to creating its own data sets,

especially through the user generated content.

Figure 15: Data being created in Map Maker for a small town in India

Other mapping services are also following the crowdsourcing path, in all services with the

exception of Big Maps and Rediff Maps are going for this approach. After Google, the

popularity lies with Wikimapia, followed by OSM India in the VGI/ Crowdsourcing aspects.

Figure 16: Nokia Ovi Maps crowdsourcing concept ‘Good Things’

Figure 17: Wikimapia map data for central Hyderabad, India. Plot, locality boundaries can be seen in grey

Figure 18: Central Hyderabad, India as seen in Google Maps. Here the property and locality boundaries are missing when cmpared with Wikimapia

Figure 19: Central Hyderabad, India - as seen in Wikimapia

Privacy

Geographic data has always been the scapegoat to Privacy in India. This has become

more relevant and predominant in the era of online mapping. These services have

come under the scanner of the government many times, and also public litigations

have been filed in the courts. As said previously, the services like Google had a major

setback when it was found that the terrorist attacks are being planned with the use of

the online mapping services. The Indian government’s fears were first aired in 2005 -

soon after the service launched.xxxi

Following the 26/11 terror attacks, a Mumbai-based advocate has moved Bombay high

court seeking a "complete ban on Google Earth and similar sites like Wikimapia'' in the

larger interest of national security. Advocate Amit Karkhanis filed a public interest

litigation (PIL) on Monday, stating that the websites gave minute details and provided

viewers with photographs and "extremely accurate navigational coordinates'' as well.

During this period, GIS Development took an opinion poll on the need to ban such

virtual offerings, and the pie chart reflects the views from its rehearsxxxii.

The above points out to the opinion that it is not right to impose such restrictions as

such services can be banned by a specific country, but will still be available for access

outside it. Other response to 'Images can be blurred for sensitive areas' is seen to be a

working solution.

To this point, the Government of India and Google have come into such agreement to

blur mapsxxxiii and such an action has been implemented by Google in India where the

blurring of images is done and for sensitive areas.

While Google has been under the scrutiny lime light, Wikimapia was also targeted, for

it uses Google Maps, and any user can create map data of sensitive areas and make it

public. Looking at such a situation, it has been seen that Bing and Yahoo have played

it safe, and the satellite data is seen to be not up to date in many situations in these

services.

Comparison of features of Digital Earth services for India Services

Features

Bhuvan Google Earth NASA World Wind

Views

Map View N N N

Satellite View Y* Resolution restriction from policy

Y* Privacy controversy Y* Types of image to be explained

Terrain View Y Y N

Map + Satellite View Y* Official data, Up to District and sub dist

Y* Border controversy Y* Controversial boundary

Panoramic View/ Street View N N* Not available in India N

3D View N N* Not available in India N

Sun Light Y* Y Y

Ocean View N Y N

Sky View N Y Y

Planetary Views N Y Y* Other views

Navigation

Overview map pane N Y Y

Navigation Tools Y Y Y

Shortcut keys Y Y Y

Touring N Y N

Flight Simulator N Y Y

Search

Basic Search Y Y Y

Address Search N Y Y* Through services like Yahoo, Microsoft

Business Listing N Y N

Saving Search N Y N

Map Directions

Driving Directions N Y N

Layers

Borders N Y* Y* to country level only

POIs N Y Y* very limited

Roads N Y N

Weather Y* Y Y

Public Data N Y N

Featured Content Y* List the content Y Y* Limited

Other Features

Creating Maps Y* Limited Y N

Sharing Maps N Y *(KML/ KMZ) N

Email N Y N

Print N Y N

Embedding in Web pages N Y N

Save as Image Y Y

Mobile option N Y* Only android N

Business/ Enterprise services N Y Y* Free

API Y* Limited Y Y

API pricing N Y N

Bhuvan – The Indian Digital Earth It was at the 28th Indian National Cartographic Association (INCA) Congress during

November, 2008 that Dr Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO at that time had announced

‘Bhuvan’, and the IRS image portal and ‘Bhoo Sampada’, an information portal. Within a year,

ISRO delivered its promise by launching the information portal during January 2009 and the

Bhuvan Beta version during 2008 December.

According to Dr Nair, “These are not mere image or information browsers, but are the

mechanisms for providing satellite images and thematic maps to the user community for the

purpose of development planning”. An interesting observation is that a majority of people did

not noticed Bhoo Sampada, but showed interest in Bhuvan. Even newspaper headlines touted

Bhuvan as “India's answer to Google Earth”; and “ISRO takes on Google”. Better late than

never, India has joined the ‘Digital Earth’ race that started in 2005 by NASA, later popularised

by Google, and Microsoft.18

Bhuvan is a geoportal to explore and discover data with specific emphasis on the Indian

region. It aims at showcasing Indian imaging capabilities in multi- sensor, multi-platform and

multi-temporal domains.

Data on Bhuvan

Availability of Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) data online for public was not possible previously,

which now can be accessed through Bhuvan. However, when it comes to very high resolution

data, it is restricted by the data policy. Apart from the IRS data, the list of data available

currently on Bhuvan is as followsxxxiv:

Satellite imagery (LISS III , LISS IV along with metadata and Multi- temporal Data

from OCM & AWiFS)

Base layers ( administrative boundaries, transport layers, water bodies, etc)

Census information

Metadata

Bhuvan also provides services that are unique where the Value added information

(NADAMS – National Agricultural Drought Monitoring System), Output of flood studies

for certain areas, Thematic information (Wastelands, Soils, watershed, water resources

related maps)which is aggregate from other online services as described below:

Ocean: Data through Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services

(INCOIS) web services

o Potential Fishing Zones (PFZ) advisories

o Sea Surface Temperature

o Chlorophyll

Disaster: Through IRSO/NRSC Disaster Management Support (DMS) programme,

information served on

o Heat Index

o Daily Forest Fire Alert

18

http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/global/2009/september/22.htm

o International disaster data sets

Gulf of México Oil Spill, 2010

Iceland volcano plume, 2010

o Droughts: Through ISRO’s National Agricultural Drought Assessment and

Monitoring System (NADAMS), historic data from 2002, 2008, 2009

o Flood data

Weather: From ISRO's Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) data available through

Meteorological and Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre (MOSDAC)

Other features and limitations

While Bhuvan boasts to have other capabilities like 3D views, fly through, Integration of GPS

data, adding pictures, 3D models, drawing features, these features are still amateur and lack

the full capabilities like its counterparts. Another important feature like API for developers is

being provided, which is mostly based on the underlying Terra Explorer API and there are not

any references to use of this API.

Currently the data and features are improving, and Bhuvan is the only mapping service that

has the official boundaries till the sub district level. However the time taken for loading of

data is very slow even though the data is tile based, and this needs further improvement. Not

the least, Bhuvan has very little POI data and it is not surprising that at city level it lacks well

behind others, and this is one of the areas of concern. Major setback is that, it has been aimed

at providing data access to the govt. agencies for applications like Urban Development, where

the limitation is with the resolution of data and lack tools with basic spatial capabilities.

Looking back a year, it can be said that Bhuvan has made substantial progress even after

coming out of India where there are serious limitations with technology limitations and

outlook of the government and its agencies.

Google Earth

Google is most popular service in India, even of the fact that Bhuvan has come out and

world wind already serves data. While it is evident to judge Google Earth’s popularity

by its rich content, namely maps, satellite data, business data and POI’s these data sets

are same as of Google Maps.

However the following features of the Google maps software makes it popular for

India:

Creating data: Onscreen digitisation, publishing and sharing is very popular in

Indian user community equally for cities and places of interest in the form of

KMLs

Search: Search of POI’s, Business and Directions

Geotagging: Tagging of other data like photos , videos geographically

3D Models: 3D models made available through Google Sketchup gallery which

is also the part of Nokia Maps

Google enjoys other features, however they are very limited in user to Indian context

like Business/ Enterprise options and not much information has been found on the

usage of its API.

Figure 20: 3D models for the available for the city of Hyderabad, India. The map highlights the locations of the models.

NASA World Wind

NASA World Wind is one of the first applications to bring out the global EO data from

NASA to public access. Currently this application provides the following data sets that

are also relevant for Indian Sub-Continent:

Landsat 7 imagery

o NLT Landsat (Visible & Pseudo Colour)

o Geocover 1990 & 2000 (pseudo; 1990 layer was produced from Landsat 4

& 5 images)

o OnEarth (visible & pseudo)

o i-cubed (visible)

Through World Wind, it is possible to view real time and near-real time data which is also

relevant for Indian sub-continent. The data is gathered and made available in real time is:

MODIS data NRL Real-Time Weather data

o Indian Ocean Data made available under Tropics Earth quake data

Additional functionalities like connection Web Mapping Services (WMS), Importing KML have been provided to connect and import data from additional sources.

However, when it comes to vector data sets, it is limited to International boundary and even there is lack of road data. This also lacks detailed POI data and place search is made available through services like Yahoo & Microsoft. The lack of good POI data, limits its capabilities in this area and it does not support search for business listings etc.

However, it is strong in providing real time and near real time data related to weather and disasters.

Figure 21: Hyderabad, India (centre if the imagery) and its surroundings as seen in NLT Landsat - Pseudo Color imagery

Further capabilities like creating maps, sharing them and printing is not supported in this application. Though API is available and this can application can be mashed up with other data, its application in Indian context has not been seen.

Figure 22: Meteorological data for India as visualised on World Wind through real-time data

Mobile Mapping Services in India The Indian mobile market is one of the largestxxxv, dynamic and fastest growing ones, with a

variety of factors contributing to the growth. In this context, major factors that can be

considered as factors that are/ can contribute to the current context of mapping services

extended to the mobile are due to factors such as cheaper prices, 3G roll out along with others

as given below:

India has one of the lowest mobile phone tariffs in the world

Availability of cheaper mobile phone (Price range of Rs.10,000 – Rs.15,000) are also

seen to be made available with GPS can be seen as a positive sign.xxxvi

There is a major roll out plan currently for the 3G services to transform the current

voice based market towards data basedxxxvii

The prospect of Value Added Services becoming a huge industry with a turnover of Rs

100,000 crores annually by 2020xxxviii

Location based services are being seen as a part of the new technological paradigm/

killer app categoryxxxix

The demand for more localized, regional content is increasingxl

In the current scenario, there are a set of mobile map applications defined for Indian market.

While the apps from Google and Nokia rely on internet as a medium to deliver and cache map

data, the other two products does seem to be providing data upfront. However, for the

purpose of comparions, the other two namely from MapMyIndia and SatGuide are still being

conidered as shown in the table below

Comparison of mobile mapping services in India

Services

Features

Google Maps Mobile MapMyIndia mobile

maps

Nokia Ovi Maps SatGuide

Operating System (OS)

Supported OS

Android

BlackBerry

iPhone

Nokia S60

Windows

Android

iPhone

Nokia S60

Windows

Nokia S60

Nokia S60

Windows

Views

Map View Y Y Y Y

Satellite View Y N N* Not available for India N

Map + Satellite View Y N N* Not available for India N

Terrain N N Y N

3D N N Y* for landmarks N

Panoramic View/ Street View N* Not available for India N N N

Navigation

Navigation Tools Y Y Y Y

Shortcut keys Y Y Y Y

Search

Basic Search Y Y Y Y

Address Search Y N Y Y

Business Listing Y N Y Y

POI Search Y Y Y Y

Map Directions

Driving Directions Y Y Y

Point to Point Navigation Y* For limited Devices Y Y Y

Other Features

Send Message Y N Y N

Live Traffic N* Not for India N N* Not for India N

Business/ Enterprise services Y Y N Y

API Y* Google Maps JavaScript

API V3 N Nxli N

API pricing Y N N N

Pricing for Usage

Application usage Free Priced

Free for products launched since 2010

Priced for older devices

Priced

Application Price*19 0 INR. 2490xlii INR 688.99 for 1 yr and 205.99 for 30 days

Rs. 990xliii

Data Upgrade Free Priced Free Priced

Data upgrade pricing 0 Rs. 990xliv 0 Rs. 490xlv

19

Prices as on 09 August, 2010. Prices may vary with time.

Free Mobile Maps Vs PNDs The maps strategy of Google which was limited to the web entered the mobile with the launch

of Maps Mobile. Nokia started Maps application for its mobile users initially as a paid version,

moved to the ‘free to use space’. These apps with the intuitive features are taking the place of

thee Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) gradually. It is being argued by manyxlvi, that the

mobile map apps on the smart phones are posing a though challenge to the PNDs.

In India in particular, the challenge for the PND market dominated by MapMyIndia and

SatNav lead them to roll out mobile apps to join the mobile space. However, compared to

their counterparts, they still carry the ‘price tag’ both for the application as well as the data

upgrade. While SatGuide is priced at below Rs.1000 (Approx $20), MapMyIndia app is still on a

higher side.

When it comes to the argument whether the mobile apps and the data should stay free or

paidxlvii, it is seen that free apps will be the preferred destination for users with the cost

recovery through ads from potential business owners. If one tries to compare the performance

of these apps, there are no direct benchmarks. However, there is an argument by Nokia that

Ovi to be better than Google Maps.

Figure 23: Efficiency comparison between Google and Ovi Mapsxlviii

While Yahoo and Bing have the mobile versions, they are not in the form of mobile

applications, but these are really mobile versions customised from the online applications with

very limited functionalities.

Data While the basic data of these mobile applications still remains vector map data, services like

Google have rolled up to provide satellite data. While Ovi Maps has the capability to deliver

satellite data, the feature is not available for India. This might be attributed to the reason, that

Nokia does not perceive the Indian user community to be demanding to it or the market

worthy enough provided with such data, which might add cost to Nokia.

However, the most powerful data is the Local Content, which is strongly attributed to be one

of the future areas for Location Based - Value Added Services such as advertising. While the

bigwigs have the commercial advantage of continuously updating the data and providing rich

local content, the others seem to have very limited edge in this area.

Features

In terms of the features, two major features that the users constantly look for are Local Search,

Turn-by-Turn Navigation.

The navigational feature set is a powerful tool, previously only limited to the PNDs. However,

with more and more smart phones available with GPS, it becomes easy to integrate real time

navigation in to the mobile space as discussed previously with all the four apps described

above having this feature. Google made one more step ahead in this space by enabling the ‘My

Location Feature’ that can use network based positioning.

Figure 24: Navigation feature of the MapMyIndia iPhone appxlix

The next powerful tool is the search, while it primarily relies on the Local Content/ Business

Data. While the major providers like Google, Yahoo, and Bing have very powerful tools for

search and rich content, the applications from the Indian counter parts suffer lack of such

feature. In the later, the local data only gets updated once there is an upgrade of map content

done by user, which limits the power of search for local content.

Other Features/ capabilities

While other major feature ‘Live Traffic’ is not present for India, as discussed earlier, Google

has made a move through services like Latitudel to keep a track of friends, and Buzzli to Share

updates, photos, videos etc with the current user location. These apps are creating interesting

trends among the mobile users and there seems to be significant usage of these apps. Other

applications, like life style based applications are widely being used – Nokia Sports Tracker is

one such application, where it used by is seen among urban consumers.

Figure 25: Pinups, showing workouts uploaded on the Nokia Sports Tracker website by residents in Delhi NCR.

Again, Google takes the step ahead in terms of providing a

special API for the mobile application, and the others lacking it.

However, their usage statistics remain unknown, especially for

India.

Figure 26: People sharing information and views about public places and events on Google Buzz

The Way ahead While the penetration of mapping apps still remain a main limitation in the country like India,

where the navigational aspect is not done through the assistance of maps of any form, may it

be paper maps or the latest gadgets and apps; rather it is still done through the assistance of

local people during the time of navigation. When it comes to map data, it can be seen that the

barrier i.e. non availability of mapping data has already been crossed, for larger cities and

towns, and with crowdsourcing strongly picking up even smaller towns will see data sets

coming up.

While it comes to value added services built around maps, online services related to Live

Traffic, Driving Directions, and Local Search are seeing to get relevance in India. And

interestingly there is a larger interest among the stakeholders from within the country. While

this can be seen as a wait and watch phenomenon, such investments will definitely pickup

with the growing accessibility of internet to a wider audience.

When it comes to mobile space, cities are definitely catching up the usage of mobile

applications that are comfortable in the use of technology. However, a recent survey on the

preferred VAS services places maps as the least preferred at 0.5%lii. The availability of such

applications and data remained a challenge, till date. However, as more and more free and

low-cost mobile map applications are provided, this void can be filled. Also, applications built

around maps as are also seeing to have popularity, like Sports Tracker discussed before. In fact

other applications centred on entertainment, social networking, transit, cab services, children/

elderly tracking etc will seem to get significant with the time to come in India.

Looking at the way ahead, local search and location based advertising, with rich local content

seems to be the next avenue in the Urban markets. With most of the apps already there in this

space, the only challenge remains is the availability of up-to-date local content for the rural

market, where at least 60% of the population in India resides. This is also the area the whole

mobile community is eyeing in terms of potential areas for business in the near future, and the

availability of up-to-date local content will not be an exception. For example a farmer can be

provided with the soil nutrient information for his locality, the kinds of crops for the season,

with best deals on fertilizers, equipment etc.

Another challenge that still remains is to make content in local language, where in a country

like India where there are more than 20 official languages and English is not the primary/

official language. Thus availability of maps and content remains an unattended domain and

both challenges and opportunities lie in this area.

References i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitier_architecture

ii http://www.gisdevelopment.net/technology/mobilemapping/solypf.htm

iii http://gorumors.com/crunchies/fastest-growing-mobile-app-categories/

iv http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/21220956/Locationbased-services-yet-to.html

v http://blog.santoshmaharshi.com/2008/09/16/india-web-internet-statistics-2008/

vi http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd435699.aspx

vii http://dev.mapindia.live.com/sdk/

viii http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/07/20/exxonmobil-integrates-bing-

maps-china-api.aspx

ix http://wikimapia.org/api/

x http://www.microsoft.com/maps/product/licensing.aspx

xi http://www.bing.com/mapindia/Help/en-in/About.htm

xii http://wikimapia.org/wiki/Main_Page

xiii http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/maps/thread?tid=2d22d2dac07521e2&hl=en

xiv http://www.google.com/help/legalnotices_maps.html

xv http://silicontryst.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/map-portals-trail-badly-in-vernacular-content/

xvi http://silicontryst.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/map-portals-trail-badly-in-vernacular-content/

xvii http://www.gisdevelopment.net/interview/previous/ev096.htm

xviii http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2009/12/landmarks-in-india-directions.html

xix http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html

xx http://www.mapunity.in/

xxi http://biz.mapmyindia.com/vehicle_tracking.html

xxii http://www.sattracx.com/s_locatorservices.aspx

xxiii http://biz.mapmyindia.com/store_locator.html

xxiv http://www.a-mantra.com/

xxv http://www.sattracx.com/

xxvi http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/randomaccess/entry/google-s-fool-all-show

xxvii

http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=3227

xxviii http://www.programmableweb.com/tag/mapping%20india?mashups=1&other=1

xxix http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/07/20/exxonmobil-integrates-bing-

maps-china-api.aspx

xxx http://www.google.com/mapmaker

xxxi http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6331033.stm

xxxii http://www.gisdevelopment.net/ezine/weekly/dec2908pollresult_terror.htm

xxxiii http://www.gisdevelopment.net/news/viewn.asp?id=GIS:N_jyernzakqg

xxxiv http://www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/faq.html

xxxv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_India

xxxvi http://www.india-cellular.com/Mobile-Features-10k-15k.htm

xxxvii http://business.in.com/article/boardroom/casino-royale-the-story-of-qualcomm/15032/0

xxxviii http://www.india-cellular.com/Press-Releases-2/VAS-9-7-10.htm

xxxix http://business.in.com/article/boardroom/how-the-mighty-have-fallen/14152/0

xl http://www.globalequations.com/Mobile_VAS_Zinnov_GE_brief.pdf

xli http://gigaom.com/2010/01/28/nokia-ovi-maps-developers

xlii http://www.mapmyindia.com/gps/products/mobile/buy.html

xliii http://www.satguide.in/product/satguide_for_windows_symbian_phones_laptops_garmin_pnd.aspx

xliv http://www.mapmyindia.com/gps/products/mobile/map_upgrade.html

xlv http://www.satguide.in/product/map_upgrade.aspx

xlvi http://mycoordinates.org/pnd-vs-mobile-is-landscape-shifting/

xlvii http://beta.gisdevelopment.net/index.php?option=com_blog&view=comments&pid=71&Itemid=0

xlviii http://gigaom.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nokiaovi2-11.gif

xlix http://www.fonearena.com/blog/9938/review-sygic-mobile-maps-india-a-turn-by-turn-navigation-

app-for-iphone.html

l http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/latitude/intro.html

li http://www.google.com/buzz

lii http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/21220956/Locationbased-services-yet-to.html