Company Overview: MapAsia.com

Vendor
MapAsia.com
8/F., Cochrane Commercial House,
13-17 Cochrane Street, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 27409680
Fax: (852) 27891758
Email: mapsale@mapasia.com
www.MapAsia.com, www.ChinaInfoMap.com

Key points:

Maps and data for China, and software
Maps and data can be pushed to your mobile device.
Some other areas in the Far East are available as well.
Software bundled with city maps and data.

I was introduced to Stanley Ng, CEO of MapAsia.com, at the Location Intelligence conference that took place in April, and followed up with him about the company's products after the conference. This article provides a brief overview of two of the company's products, China infoMap and MapKing.

MapAsia produces software and map data for China and other countries in the Far East. The company can push maps to your cell phone. Routing and points of interest are also available from the company for a number of cities.

While MapAsia is a MapInfo partner, the company also provides data in several other formats. The company has its own software products which it provides with data bundles, including China infoMap for China and MapKing, which is mobile software. MapKing provides the POIs, routing and a large collection of maps and data for much of the Far East. These products support up to six languages, including traditional and simplified Chinese, English and local languages. In some markets they can also provide maps and data as a Web service.

China infoMap
For Chinese demographics data, MapAsia builds on a license granted by the Statistics Bureau of China to All China Marketing Research (ACMR). The license gives the company access to the best available, most current data for China. While street centerlines and boundary files are available, precise address matching continues to be a challenge. However, MapAsia's products can provide routing between and among intersections and points of interest (POIs) in many cities.

According to MapAsia, China infoMap's characteristics are as follows.

Provides an overview of China's geography and demographics
Data can be exported in standard formats
Data can be accessed in various formats (maps, charts, tables and thematics)
Maps are presented as vectors, for optimum scaling
'My Map'ï¿1⁄2 functionality that allows the program to remember user-defined map and data definitions
Comes with street level maps for Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Chongqing

China infoMap's coverage area. (Click for larger image)

The product includes demographic data for provinces, prefectures, major cities, secondary cities, counties and city districts. Fields include population, employment, national economics, industrial enterprises, domestic and foreign trade, finance and insurance, education, energy, income and expenditure and others.

The national level map data includes administrative boundaries (province, prefecture, city, county), point locations for 2,300 cities and counties, coastal islands, rivers, lakes and reservoirs, railway lines, expressways and national highways. City level map data include city roads and streets (expressway, main road and city street), major landmarks, railway and subway lines and stations, parks, rivers and lakes (additional details).

MapKing
MapKing is a 'pan-regional multi-lingual GPS enabled mobile map product.' MapKing supports multiple operating systems and languages. It provides routing, POIs and location search on mobile devices.

Coverage includes Greater China (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, the Pearl River Delta road network, Shenzhen, Dongguan Macau Hong Kong Hiking Trial, Taipei, TaiChung, Tainan, Hsinchu, KaoHsiung and points for 2,300 more cities). Additional cities in other countries include: Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, Johor, Jakarta, New Delhi, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, and tourist maps for Ho Chi Minh City Tourist and Seoul.

MapAsia has a surprisingly robust selection of products for a part of the world where data collection is not easy. If you are doing business in this part of the world, or if you just plan to travel there as a tourist, check it out.