Perspectives

This is probably a right time to sit down and write about how mapping services are going to change your life, especially if you are living in developing or going to develop countries. In a few years, hopefully, this post wont have much relevance. GIS, GPS and LBS would probably already be a part of your life. This post is an Indian outlook to it.

Like I mentioned before, Local seems to be the buzz word in Indian internet industry. People have saturated or will saturate entertainment needs of the indian internet/mobile user. Wallpapers, ringtones, call tunes etc are already the biggest revenue generators for many companies and telcos.

Now infotainment is the in thing. And Maps will be an integral part of this industry. We already know onyomo does maps. Next, there are folks like routeguru and tolmolbol. While Tolmolbol will probably source their maps from Google, Routeguru, which gets it’s local and GIS data from Eicher, will probably use Eicher for rendering their maps as well. Routeguru is a very interesting routing service in that they use landmarks along the way to give you routes. Now, that is how Indians are used to driving directions. Burrp is another neatly done local’s site, and maps+burrp will be even better. Ilaaka doesnt deserve to be in this list, but what the heck, they show you a map too..from wikimapia.

The folks next in line are property services, of the likes of indiaproperty, 99acres etc. It will be a wonderful addon and a great service to folks looking to rent/buy real estate.

Certain other holiday/travel based sites show you maps too. Check out holidayiq for instance. Cleartrip is almost there with their “small world” service. The map is just too important there to be missing.

What do you think? GIS are here to stay? Or is it still too early to talk about it?