14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is heavily investing in Bing Maps and part of the recent improvements that it made to the service, there’s also a new update specifically launched for the Japanese market.
Starting this month, Japanese users of Bing Maps benefit from improved transit features, thus getting more accurate information on a specific route via the web-based interface or the dedicated app.
“With this release, we’ve expanded the number of agencies and routes in Bing Maps. This means that no matter where you’re heading in Japan, if there’s a transit route that can get you there, we know about it and can tell you how to use it. This is great news both for tourists and commuters, whether your commute is short or you have a meeting in another city,” Microsoft explained in an announcement.
At the same time, Bing Maps is now providing details walking instructions to Japanese users, which means that you can always get to your destination faster using a Windows Phone device with access to Microsoft’s mapping service.
Tourists are also getting their very own share of improvements, as all train and station names are displayed in English thanks to this new update.
“We’ve now extended Bing Maps to include English translations of station names, so that even if you’re a tourist who cannot read Japanese, you will find the right train. Previously, when we provided instructions about which trains to take or which stations to depart from, the only data provided were the names in Japanese,” Microsoft said.
Bing Maps is indeed getting better, and with every new update, Microsoft is clearly appealing to more users who might want to give a try to another product than Google Maps. As you most likely know by now, Google Maps is currently the number one service of its kind, but Bing Maps is quickly gaining ground thanks to all these improvements that are released regularly.
Microsoft attempts to make the transit feature better for tourists and commuters, thus attempting to appeal to a wider consumer segment and steal some users from Google Maps.
“With this release, we’ve expanded the number of agencies and routes in Bing Maps. This means that no matter where you’re heading in Japan, if there’s a transit route that can get you there, we know about it and can tell you how to use it. This is great news both for tourists and commuters, whether your commute is short or you have a meeting in another city,” the company noted.