2010

Comparison of online mapping

services in India

Harsha Vardhan Madiraju

http://twitter.com/harsham
8/26/2010
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
Figure 4: Map at Zoom Level 0. Figure 5: Map at Zoom Level 4, where
4
Therefore is represented in one tile the image gets divided in to 4 , i.e. 16
10
tiles

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
Mashups are a new breed of applications
collection of API’s that perform their
that combine(s) data from more than one
individual functions, and the standard
source and help in making out an
applications that users build upon,
integrated tool (for example combining
depending on the need the required API’s
Google Maps with Classifieds
are accessed by a programme currently
information). Thus mashups help in
running. In the web for example the Google
creating/envisaging new web services for
Maps API provides developers the Google
your personal and commercial use
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,
ii
but a system built using a fundamentally new paradigm.

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 BIG Maps Bing Maps for Google Maps Map My India Nokia Ovi Maps Open Street Rediff Maps SatNav Roads Wikimapia Yahoo Maps
Alpha India India Maps Maps India Beta of India Map India
portal

Features

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
N Y Y N Y N N N Y* Y
View
Bird’s Eye View N N N N N N N N N N
Panoramic View/
N N N N N N N N N N
Street View
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
N Y Y Y Y N Y Y N Y
pane
Draggable Maps Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y* Y
Shortcut keys Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y* Y
Search
 Locations  Address
 Business  Street Name
 Business  All
 User-  Address  Business/
 Basic Search  Collections  Location  City Address
Search Options generated  Business N N* Facilities
 POI Search  Locations  Local POI  Coordinates Business
content  Category  Area Name
 Categorical
 Related Maps  City
Real Estate
Y* (Categorical,
Value Added
N Y Y Y Y N N N Wikipedia, Y
Information
Panaromia)
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 N N N N Y* - Temperature N N N N Y
directions
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*
Yes - Available
Yes – but at a Yes – for Nokia
Mobile option N but not as a Yes for free N N Y – at a price N Y
price S630 phones
software
Business/
N Y Y Y N N** N Y N Y
Enterprise services
viii
Y*vii

API Y Y Y N Y* N N Yix Y

Yx
API pricing N Y Y N N N N N N

 Map  Tracking of
Cruncher Child &
 Map Maker
Beta for Bing Family
 Local
Maps Tracking;
Business
 Bing Maps- Personnel,  Placemaker
Other related Listing  Map your  Ovi Maps  Rediff Local
No 3DVIA Assets & None  Fire Eagle
services  Latitude India mobile Search
MapPoint Logistics;  GeoPlanet
 Map Your
 Virtual Earth Lost Mobiles
World
 Photosynth  Citizen
 Geosynth Mapper

Map content & Updation

Y*
 Automotive
does not
Navigation  CE Info  Google Maps
 Reliance N – creates its CE Info Systems mention clearly
Content Partners Data (AND) Systems* till Navteq Crowdsourcing N  Crowdsourcing
ADAG own content ML Infomap however CE Info
 Navteq 2009
is providing data
 Indiacomxi
for India
Updation
N N N N N N N N N
Timeframe
Crowdsourcing/ Y* Through ‘Good
N Y* Y Y Y N Y Y Y*
VGI Things’
Policies/ Terms & Conditions
Yxii (Guided by
Service Usage
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Google Maps Y
Policy
Terms)
Data quality policy N N N*xiii N N N N N N N/A
Data updation
N N N N N N N N N* Y*
Policy
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 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

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.
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 Arunachal Pradesh as seen in Google Maps
edition India http://maps.google.co.in.
http://ditu.google.com

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 Bhuvan Google Earth NASA World Wind

Features

Views

Map View N N N
Y* Resolution restriction from
Satellite View Y* Privacy controversy Y* Types of image to be explained
policy
Terrain View Y Y N
Y* Official data, Up to District
Map + Satellite View Y* Border controversy Y* Controversial boundary
and sub dist
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
 Y* Through services like Yahoo,
Address Search N Y
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
Google Maps Mobile MapMyIndia mobile Nokia Ovi Maps SatGuide
Services maps

Features

Operating System (OS)

 Android  Nokia S60

 Android
 BlackBerry  Windows
 iPhone  Nokia S60
Supported OS  iPhone
 Nokia S60
 Nokia S60
 Windows
 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
Y* Google Maps JavaScript N
API API V3 N Nxli

API pricing Y N N N
Pricing for Usage
 Free for products Priced
launched since 2010
Application usage Free Priced
 Priced for older
devices
INR 688.99 for 1 yr and Rs. 990xliii
Application Price*19 0 INR. 2490xlii
205.99 for 30 days
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.

xlviii
Figure 23: Efficiency comparison between Google and Ovi Maps

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.

xlix
Figure 24: Navigation feature of the MapMyIndia iPhone app

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
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