China's Internet giant bat all indirectly has a grade A map mapping qualification

With Alibaba wholly-owned acquisition of the map, the Chinese Internet giant bat all indirectly have a grade A map mapping qualification. As an important entry point of mobile internet era, map is a strategic product of every large Internet company, an important part of the moat, and also the most dependent mobile Internet portal for consumers. How does the map relate to our lives? How did bat change the map business?

The full access to Alibaba's business system, the potential of maps and navigation applications, and the improvement of Alibaba's O2O layout in the mobile era.

On the evening of February 10, the first blockbuster 2014 Internet acquisition was announced. Alibaba Group has submitted a proposal to the High German Holdings Limited for a cash takeover of the company's shares at a price of $21 per share of US depository shares. Alibaba now holds a 28% per cent stake in the company, which will become Alibaba's 100%-holding subsidiary after the deal is completed.

The move was interpreted as: Alibaba bought a map of the German gold. The full access to Alibaba's business system, the potential of maps and navigation applications, and the improvement of Alibaba's O2O layout in the mobile era.

As an important entrance of mobile internet era, map is an important part of every large Internet company's strategic product and moat. Google has Google Maps, Apple in order to get rid of Google Maps, invest heavily in the development of their own map products. At home, the map business is slightly different from the US. Domestic map mapping qualification is controlled, the National Bureau of Mapping in 2010 on the Internet Map services to establish a access system, divided into four grade B, a different level of surveying and mapping enterprises, the design of the operating range of a big difference.

According to the new revised "Internet Map Service Professional standards", access to the Internet map Services Grade A surveying and mapping units, can engage in map search, location services, geographical information tagging services, map download, replication services, map delivery, reference services, such as four of services; Can be engaged in the first two categories of services, but not the latter two categories.

Chinese internet giant Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba, all indirectly have a grade A map mapping qualification. Baidu in the last year wholly-owned acquisition of the company has a grade A surveying and mapping qualified companies long Wanfang; Tencent in January this year to 60 million yuan in the price of a wholly-owned acquisition of Grade A surveying and mapping qualification company Fineline Aerospace Information Technology Co. Have the quality of the underlying map data.

Maps, as the real-world map, are also the most reliant mobile internet portals for consumers. How does the map relate to our lives? How did BAT change the map business?

Gould is one of the most important map data producers in China's digital map industry. Both the underlying data and the POI and other data have huge reserves.

The data in the map

Map aggregation of data divided into the underlying data, POI data, as well as other data layers, such as traffic situation layer, three-dimensional map, Street View, professional some of the real estate map, indoor map, temperature distribution map, Business Circle distribution map and so on.

The underlying data is the most basic type of data in the map, along with additional information on the basis, such as roads, rivers, and mountain ranges, which are either from official maps or from the field, or from aerial, satellite, or remote sensing images.

We usually use the data on the electronic map is POI data, it is the simplest vector data, for the human life is closely related to the site tagging, such as shops, gas stations, banks, hospitals and other common facilities. This is also the most important piece of data that internet companies want to do O2O services. In the age of mobile Internet, people's travel is also to POI as the destination, geographical coordinates to return to ask second. Whether it's navigating or O2O, it's important to collect this data. At home, POI data suppliers do not have too many qualification restrictions, NavInfo and Gould also provide POI data, but many times, we also bought each other to make up for the shortfall.

In other data layers, there are many socialized, localized, and mobile data, depending on the user in the form of use and manual check-in, Waze mode is a good example, open positioning application is a rich part of the map information. "Check-in" and "use navigation" are two important sources of UGC (user-generated content) information.

From the basic geographical coordinates to every x, Y represents the actual specific store, gas stations and hospitals, as well as traffic information, Business Circle distribution map, indoor map layers like a pancake fell together, the map became the real world mapping, in navigation, query based on, who can put a lot of can and LBS ( Location based services) combined with the POI point on the map has a better show, who has to win the most consumers weight.

New Gold vs four-dimensional graphs

Four-dimensional and gold is China's digital map industry duopoly, the most important map data producers. Both of the underlying data and POI and other data have the most abundant reserves. The new actual control of the four-dimensional diagram is the national surveying and Mapping Geographic Information Bureau of China and has its own mapping satellite.

In terms of navigation, Analysys International data show that as of the third quarter of 2013, the intelligent Terminal Online mobile map navigation clients cumulative number of users market share, the gold map accounted for 31.3%, while the Baidu map accounted for 26.6%, Tencent map accounted for about 2.2%.

After the acquisition of the gold, the first line of the map trader left only four-dimensional map new. BAT, in addition to Ali, the other two are closely related to the four-dimensional, including Baidu map, Sogou map and other maps used in the four-dimensional map of the new data provided. Recently Sogou CEO Zhou Xiaochuan as a new independent director of the four-dimensional map, also makes people full of imagination. Tencent buy Ali Background of the data also buy four-dimensional map of the new data, in order to avoid being the drastic, in the early this year bought Fineline. However, the new four-dimensional map does not have to face the consumer terminal brand output, itself in the mobile application level has no achievements.

With the development of mobile Internet strategy, the difference between them becomes more and more obvious. Four-dimensional will be the future development strategy in the intelligent transportation, has been adhering to include vehicle navigation, dynamic traffic information, Telematics, including the Intelligent transportation field investment. Its century Qualcomm has done much better than gold in intelligent transportation, Baidu real-time road use is the century Qualcomm data, which is part of the car depot and operators and other customers very much valued, according to the National Gold Securities analysis, the German investment in the field of reduction, so that car customers gradually to the four-dimensional map of the new transfer.

Gould

He has focused on the internet and the mobile Internet, announcing the navigation app free from 2013 to the launch of Lin Chi-Ling's voice navigation software, creating a brand image directly among consumers. Gold Map API is currently the only one can provide a full platform (Android, IOS, WPB, JS) of the map API products, flexible interface design and professional, many companies, including Ctrip, the public comments in the vertical areas of life companies with the map API to achieve strategic cooperation. This is the equivalent of the German through the integration, crowdsourcing, trusteeship, collection and other means of gathering a large number of LBS life services related data, and formed a small ecological circle. Now, including Sina, market, 360, instant and so on more than 30,000 well-known websites have called the Gold map API to support its Internet map location business.

Platforms and larger platforms

The transformation of the gold is somewhat like the tool software to the later development way: to do the platform. In China Mobile's internet market, which is money-changing, it has not yet waited for its real flourish to be bought by a bigger platform.

According to the electric business experts, the map will be an important entrance to the O2O, Ali in the grasp of the first advantage of payment, hope to complement the map of the short board. 2013 Ali to 294 million U.S. dollars after a stake in the gold, launched a series of data docking, in addition to intelligent logistics "ground network" cooperation, eye-catching also has the day cat and the gold map of cooperation. At the same time, the gold map of the billion users, to a certain extent, to make up for Ali in the mobile client vulnerable. In Baidu, Tencent, Ali's three big giants, Baidu has the first advantage of maps, navigation market share and the same, intelligent transportation system even better than the POI, the data is also very rich; Tencent map relative to the edge, people's impression of it still stay in Soso Street, but the snake-horse communication, Tencent through the red envelope quickly layout payment, and through the acquisition of a class A navigation and mapping qualification of the Fineline company to improve their map business layout.

The competition of mobile platform is becoming more and more competition of ecological circle, the prosperity of the biosphere and the user experience complement each other, realize O2O also may not rely solely on the geographical information guidance a way, social information, user Word-of-mouth information or based on the other information on the map, such as weather can become the entrance, they may develop independent small ecological circle, may also be attached to the great biosphere.

Yelp is a good example of how Yelp has collaborated with Apple Maps, Microsoft and Yahoo in the United States to incorporate local POI Word-of-mouth data into search results. Google, which had offered to buy Yelp and was rejected, pushed a public-comment project to contend with Yelp, and crawled through Yelp's commentary data. Between companies due to data from the feud between a wonderful internet gossip.

is considered "Chinese version Yelp" The public comment also has own ecology circle, through the public comment API, the developer's related application may according to the user real time demand, accesses the public to comment on the platform the local merchant information, the merchant comment, the preferential and buys and so on content.

POI in the real world of word-of-mouth data, equivalent to the user evaluation of Taobao Small business significance, said that the O2O of another infrastructure construction is not too.

Coincidentally, like Yelp, the public comment is often the protagonist of the "pseudo acquisition" news, after a period of time, it is necessary to pass a "be Baidu acquisition", or "Tencent Strategic shares", the recent Ali shares of gold, a wave of speculation is forced to the public comments have to be in Sina Weibo home page rumor: "You kiss, again, Public comments will not be acquired. ”

An Apple patent disclosed at the end of 2013 signalled that the future of Apple Maps would provide richer functionality and data to users through a pattern superimposed on the map layer. The patent will help map users dynamically adjust and view various data and content from the Internet, such as traffic routes, tourism floors, or weather information layers. This will also be the way we use maps in the future, and maps will classify real-world information, and we can selectively view and filter it from one layer to the next. The content index of each layer can even breed a small company, or form its own biosphere, or be eaten by the larger biosphere.