Sogou Maps Expands 3D Maps API, Brings Free Voice Navigation to Android App

The pixel-art style of Sogou Maps' 3D layer.

Sogou Maps has Google’s rival service in its sight in China as its opens up its 3D maps API and adds voice navigation to its Android app. This marks a significant push forward for this perpetual underdog as it seeks to engage with more third-party developers to expand its business listings and other supplementary features. Its Maps service seems designed to act as a halo product to bring people to its search and social features.

To that end, its map service already has apps for Android phones (pictured below) and tablets, and a web app designed for iPhone and iPad users. It’s not clear if iOS standalone apps are under development.

Sogou Maps for Android shows a suggested route, time, and taxi fare. Look out for the voice navigation update later.

Sogou was designed as a Google and Baidu competitor, with similar areas of expertise in search, music, and maps. It was created by Chinese portal Sohu, which sold parts of it to Alibaba last year.

The 3D feature of Sogou’s online mapping site is a cute-looking pixel-art creation (see the above screenshot, showing Shanghai’s financial district) that gives a better idea of an area’s look and feel than its own satellite imagery – or that of Google and Baidu. There’s no Google StreetView in China – likely due to regulatory restrictions – although a small mapping service, City8, has painstakingly created a StreetView clone. One key feature of Sogou’s 3D layer is that every building is clickable, to give the user more details of what’s inside. That’s where the revamped – and free – API comes in, giving greater access to developers in many industries to use this layer to promote businesses or provide useful local information. The 3D aspect covers 84 cities across China.

At the moment, despite the Sogou Maps app push – as well as nice web browsers and free IMEs to further ingratiate themselves with Chinese netizens – Sogou’s progress is slow. In the last batch of search engine market share data, the company hit just 1.55 percent (to Baidu’s 75.81); while in the mapping arena, Sogou Maps didn’t even register a mention in a segment still dominated in China by Google Maps (with 46.3 percent).

Take a look at Sogou Maps here. The Android app will get the voice navigation update sometime later this month.

[Source: Donews – article in Chinese]