By: Eric Gundersen
Maps are part of everything — connecting the offline to the online, changing the way we move around the world, checking the weather, planning a trip, or visualizing how we run our businesses. And now, we’re bringing our live location platform and suite of customization tools to Japan.
At SoftBank World, I announced the opening of our Japan operations. This is more than just opening a headquarters in Tokyo — we’re hiring some of the best technologists and engineers to be technical partners for our current and future customers to help you leverage every part of our platform. We are going to be the number one mapping provider in all of Japan and we’ll be able to do this because we have the best data in all of Japan through our partnership with Zenrin.
Zenrin brings incredible diligence and precision from over 70 years of generating the best mapping data in Japan. For customers of Mapbox, this will be truly transformative. We will add Zenrin’s precise data to every Mapbox map in Japan alongside our live location platform. This is going to power everything from navigation to the biggest consumer applications in Japan.
Our first customer in Japan and the first customer to use this Zenrin data is Yahoo! JAPAN. This fall, Yahoo! JAPAN will launch their next generation of maps, creating an entirely new experience powered by Mapbox. The designers and cartographers at Yahoo! JAPAN gave us a first look at what users will experience across their web and mobile apps when they launch this fall, and it is truly beautiful
Announcing at SoftBank World our work with top consumer app in Japan is really exciting, but we did not stop there. We’re also ready to support enterprise customers, like our partnership with Komatsu. Komatsu is transforming the way cities and infrastructures are built and how automation works. And now, they’re using Mapbox to help their site management in real-time, and instruct autonomous machinery on where to work, and more.
This is just the beginning of our work in Japan. To get in touch with our team, and to follow along for updates visit mapbox.jp and sign up.
🇯🇵🗺🚀 SoftBank World was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.