Mumbai — Software behemoth Microsoft Corp. has launched its much awaited Live Search Maps for India on Monday. The company, along with the introduction of various navigational features, it also offers users access to detailed listings and street maps for nine major Cities, business listings across 29 major Cities, in addition to providing access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns. Microsoft’s Live Map search is powered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform, and with map data from Navteq and the Goverment of India.
“Live Search Maps will be accessible on the PC and the mobile, thus ensuring that users get the information they need anytime.”
Live Search Maps for India is on Microsoft’s Live Search Service, thereby allowing users to search for geographical information, places of general interest and business listings both on the PC and Mobile at http://maps.live.co.in and http://m.live.co.in.
This is the first version of its local mapping service for India with the key features has been developed by the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) based in Hyderabad.
While speaking to the media on the occasion of its launch, Rishi Srivastava, Consumer & Online Marketing Operations Head, Microsoft India, said, “We are proud to launch Live Search Maps for users in our country. This is the first version of Live Search Maps for India and Microsoft will continue to introduce new features and improvements in the near future to meet emerging needs of consumers.”
“Live Search Maps for India will empower users to search for geographical information, places of general interest and business listings both on the PC and mobile phones,” Srivastava told reporters here.
Adding, Srivastava said that for the past two years, Microsoft has been conducting relatively significant investments into research and development for Live Search, acquired global resources and introduced several new features which we believe are extremely relevant and will deliver great value to our users.
A Direct to Consumer (DTC) service that does not require a mobile go-between, which means a user does not need a mobile connection to use it, is also available. It delivers 2D mobile maps, location search, driving directions, and supports adaptive rendering.
“With strong technical investment, the service offers improved coverage, related searches and seamless experience across cloud, PC and mobile applications,” says Srivastava.
The key features of this service are street maps, location search, routing or directions for navigation, business listing search, etc. It also allows users to print and share collections through email, blogs on Windows Live.
Apart from that, there are some other relevant aspects of Location Search on Live Search Maps, for example, global relevance, context-awareness, partial decoding of address, error-tolerance, acronym expansion, road intersection and context sensitive global fuzzy search.
Users can now access on their PC or Mobile …..
- Addresses, roads, localities, landmarks, detailed street maps and places of general interest like monuments, restaurants, hotels and other places of interest across 9 Indian cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur.
- Business listings across 29 major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Agra, Allahabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Cochin, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Nagpur, Nasik, Patiala, Patna, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara and Vishakapatnam.
- Basic geographical information on the national road network of India across 20,000 cities and towns.
After the very innovations for Live Search like image search, local search, video search, xRank and instant answers, Microsoft has rolled out the Live Search Maps on its search platform. It will enable people to discover, learn and even explore specific locations in India. Microsoft is also planning to include new features like landmark based driving directions, collections search, options for enterprise customers and developer community to create custom mash-ups in this service.
Enterprises, for instance FMCG companies, can take advantage of this service for networking using the B2B listing service or simply use data to know the smaller towns around big cities and device their strategies for the semi-urban market.
Microsoft has partnered with NavTeq for data compilation and offers 600,000 business listings in 29 cities. “NavTeq, which is one of the largest technically-sound data platform providers in the world has already procured license by the Government of India,” says Gurpreet S. Pal, general manager- Live Search and MSN Technologies, MIDC.
The company hopes to add 30 more cities to the portfolio and street maps for another 15 major locations by the end of this year. “We are planning to include various functionalities that include landmark-based driving directions, satellite imaginary and hybrid view,” says he.
However, sources familiar with the matter at Microsoft believe that feedback from consumers, and focused and interested groups is more important, in addition to comprehensive coverage is essential, before monetizing on it. Microsoft India is also planning more value-added services, including inclusion of rich data and navigation aids on national and sub highways.
Talking about the revenue model, Srivastava said, “The service is free for consumers. We will generate revenues through advertisements but that will be later. Currently, we are focusing on generating unique consumer experience to have people using the service.”
This service does not require any special client as it can work on WAP or any mobile device and browser. “The mapping service is currently available only in English. We will introduce regional languages depending on users’ feedback,” says Srivastava.
“With locally relevant feature functionality and topologically accurate government approved data, we will continue to offer innovative services with adapted platform for the Indian market,” he added.
Similar services are already being offered by its rivals Google, Yahoo and domestic firms like MapMyIndia.