Which Mapping Service Should We Select in China?

Abstract

The mapping services have been widely used in our daily lives. People can use the services to find his/her nearest POI (Point of Interests), the shortest travel route from a source location to a destination location, and even life services like booking hotels, calling taxis and so on. Consequently, more and more mapping service providers have emerged in the past years in China, like Baidu Maps, Amap and Sogou Maps. However, there is no existing study on how to select the suitable one for users/developers when they facing so many different mapping services, which is the problem that we focus on in this paper. We first design a questionnaire and analyze the results to show the current mapping service situation in China; then, we introduce and summarize the most three popular native mapping APIs in China, e.g., Baidu Maps API, Amap API and Sogou Maps API, to give readers a brief guider for selecting their suitable mapping services.