Huawei set to announce Map Kit to rival Google Maps in October

Huawei recently announced its Plan B when it comes to having its own mobile operating system **in the form of the Harmony OS** (to be called Hongmeng OS in China). It is a well-known fact that things aren’t all well between Google and Huawei thanks to the on-going US-China trade war. The future of Google services on Huawei devices is a big question mark. Just like it announced an alternative to Android OS, Huawei also wants to reduce its reliance on Google Maps, which is easily the most popular mapping service used on smartphones. With no access to Google Services, Google Maps would be non-functional on Huawei devices. To that effect, Huawei is planning to release Map Kit, its mapping solution which is expected to come out in October this year. [caption id=“attachment_6349251” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Huawei Technologies.[/caption] According to a report in GizmoChina, Map Kit will not be available to consumers directly. But Huawei wants developers to build applications using the mapping capabilities of Map Kit. Huawei has developed Map Kit in partnership with Russia’s Yandex and US travel website Booking Holdings. Map Kit is expected to be available in 40 languages and will have coverage in 150 countries and regions. It will be connected to local mapping services. Huawei is also betting on its telecom infrastructure across the globe to complement the satellite positioning for Map Kit. Some of the major features that Map Kit is expecting to provide include real-time traffic conditions, support for AR Mapping, advanced navigations systems which will feature car switching between lanes among other things said Huawei Consumer Business Group cloud services president Zhang Pigan. Apart from Map Kit, Huawei will also be developing Site Kit, Location Kit, Drive Kit and Scan Kit and so on.