NAVTEQ Launches On-line Mapping Portal

On May 12^th NAVTEQ announced the launch – in beta - of a mapping portal and geospatial platform (www.navteq.com) including routing capabilities and content such as real-time traffic (in US metropolitan areas) and drive time calculation as well as dynamic location data. This follows similar launches by navigation and LBS vendors TomTom (route planner) and Nokia (maps on Ovi) confirming the increasingly important role of PC-based mapping solutions as a key complement to mobile navigation and LBS applications and services for trip planning and sending destinations to mobile devices.
 

 

However, this time the mapping portal is mainly positioned to showcase NAVTEQ’s products and capabilities as NAVTEQ does not offer mobile end user solutions, it merely powers them. Nevertheless the portal is useful in its own right to check traffic or plan trips. Other features include junction and exit views (displayed both on the map and integrated into the written instructions, a very nice addition), 2D city footprints, satellite imagery, elevation contours, point addressing, and transit information (as part of NAVTEQ Discover Cities).

 

Importantly, the portal also provides convenient access to NAVTEQ’s Map Reporter which should boost the volume of community user feedback reports, an area which NAVTEQ has not focused on very much up to now in stark contrast with competitor TomTom / Tele Atlas. It is interesting to see crowd sourcing has now become a universally accepted concept to keep data complete and up-to-date.

 

The mapping technology is based on vector maps, a more efficient way to encode map features compared with map images, allowing faster refresh rates and manipulations such as seamless zooming and tilting. Nokia’s Maps on Ovi is also based on vector maps.