New Venture Announced by SoftBank and Mapbox Might Transform Maps
SoftBank Group Corp. and Mapbox Co. a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo and American provider of custom online maps headquartered in Washington have announced a joint venture today. The joint venture is called MapBox. It is a mapping platform which will provide Mapbox’s premier location data platform and global mapping services including APIs and data services to developers in Japan.
In addition, Japanese Mapbox will be providing three months of support for organizations building COVID-19-related mapping services without charges. It will include statistical data of infection cases for developers in the country. For the statistics, it will rely on tracking virus clusters to limit the spread of infections.
Mapbox uses advanced AI to provide user-friendly APIs and SDKs. It collects data from several different sources such as government and commercial databases for highly customizable and enhanced services. Today, location-based technologies are being increasingly, in addition to being, widely recognized by enterprises for improving customer experience.
Some of the clients for MapBox have been Snap, Facebook, the New York Times, automotive companies like Land Rover and Rimac, and the Federal Communications Commission.
Head of Business Development of SoftBank Corp, Eric Gan, SoftBank Corp. said. “I am very excited to bring Mapbox’s technology to Japan to help enterprises enhance their existing mapping services while also creating new customizable location-based services and management tools. We are seeing a significant rise in demand for Mapbox’s products from retail, ride-share, hotel, office-sharing, payment, mobility and manufacturing industries.”
Mapbox offers a high degree of design flexibility due to APIs and SDKs which makes it simple for systems integrators (SIers), application developers, and enterprises. It can be utilized to deliver powerful, location-based user engagement, 3D, turn-by-turn navigation, data visualization, aerial imagery, live traffic, and so much more. Solutions like Mapbox can help customers deploy custom features by combine their own data to manage an end-to-end solution on-premise.