Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Battle of the Indoor Maps

The battle of the indoor maps is heating up.  aisle411 just announced the launch of additional 7900 indoor maps for retail stores, brining their total to 9,000 in the US. We wrote about Google now having 10,000 indoor maps available, however, this number is for worldwide and only 200 specific venues are confirmed being available now to Google Maps Android users.  Also, we wrote about Microsoft Bing Maps now having 2,700 indoor maps, worldwide.

The industry is still fragmented and works in silos, except for Microsoft and Nokia where Nokia is providing its Destination Maps to Microsoft Bing Maps. Also, some consolidation or aggregation is expected to take place as only some of the players are specializing in particular verticals (i.e. Retail, Museums). Below is our take on the number of indoor maps each company has, including Google, Nokia, aisle411, Micello, and Point Inside. Retail maps are for venues such as Walgreens,  Home Depot, and similar. 
In more detail, Nokia (Navteq) has made its indoor maps available in 2011, which now cover 38 countries. Nokia has released the the infographic below, showing that the majority of those locations are in North America, followed by EMEA. Nokia also shows that people spend 87% of their time indoors. We agree and wrote about this back in 2010. In addition to malls and airports, Nokia is also mapping out stadiums and amusement parks.