14 DAY TRIAL // Google Maps is becoming increasingly popular on mobile phones, Google’s VP of Location and Local Services, Marissa Mayer, stated a few days ago at the SXSW Conferences & Festivals.
With over 150 million mobile users on Google Maps at the moment, the service is among the most popular around the world.
The fact that more and more people are using various services on their mobile devices is no mystery, but it seems that Google Maps is on its way to be enjoy more mobile users than desktop ones.
At the moment, around 40 percent of all Google Maps users are mobile, Marissa Mayer stated, while adding that the mobile usage surpassed desktop usage for the first time during Christmas and New Years day.
The Google Maps services is becoming increasingly contextually aware, and can offer far more information that before.
If you're trying to catch a flight, the app would offer info on the flight schedule, as well as on the traffic conditions and weather, so as to suggest the time when one should leave home.
Among the other stats Google unveiled, we can count the fact that Google Maps Navigation, which was included on Android handsets, has already guided users 12 billion miles a year.
Recently, Google included real-time traffic re-routing with Google Maps Navigation (currently in beta), which can save users around 2 years per day in time that would have been otherwise spent being stuck in traffic.
The latest version of Google Maps for Android, 5.2, was included in the Android Market a few weeks ago. The previous release added check-ins with Latitude into the mix.
Apparently, Google would aim at offering a better Google Maps for other mobile platforms as well, such as Apple's iPhone: “We like being the default provider, but we’d like to get some of these updates out to a broader audience. That’s still a debate/question we’re considering.”