Huawei is working on its own map service

Huawei is working on its own map service called Map Kit. This should allow developers to show maps in apps. The unveiling of the map service will follow in October, the company says. Map Kit should make Huawei less dependent on Google.

In addition to roads, the maps must also show the traffic on those roads, reports China Daily based on information from Huawei. In addition, the navigation should be precise enough to recognize that a driver changes lanes, although it is unknown exactly how that works.

Map Kit should cover 150 countries upon release, and the Russian search site Yandex, among others, will start using the software. There won’t be a Map Kit app on Huawei phones right away: it’s just a service developers can use.

Although Huawei doesn’t put it that way, it seems that Map Kit was co-developed for its own operating system HarmonyOS. That cannot use Google services, so apps must be able to use a different map service. Huawei wants to present Map Kit in October.