OREANDA-NEWS. Global and China HD Map Industry Report, 2016 by ResearchInChina is mainly concerned with the following:

    • Acquisition modes and technical analysis of HD maps;
    • Market situation of global self-driving cars, covering structure and classification of autonomous driving, as well as domestic and foreign markets and policy environment;
    • Market situation of global HD maps, including status quo, layout, and development trends;
    • HD map industry chain, involvinglidar, cameras, positioning systems, IMU, and algorithms, etc.;
    • Analysis of 7 major Chinese and foreign HD map providers, containing technical analysis as well as development and future trends of HD map business.

At present, there are mainly four types of enterprises that dominate the layout in the HD map field: internet firms, auto makers, sensor vendors, and digital map providers.

I) Internet Firms

Internet tycoons like Google and UBER have, through acquisitions, obtained map data resources before producing HD maps based on their own algorithms and cloud computing capabilities. Google acquired a large number of digital map providers like Keyhole, Skybox, and Waze. In China, however, ground mapping is a highly confidential sector and therefore sets a higher entry threshold, which gives a big advantage to the Chinese digital map providers and turns away foreign players. Currently, there are 166 internet companies with mapping qualifications in China, and Internet giants like Baidu and Alibaba have through acquisitions occupied an important position in the Chinese map industry. Among them, Baidu purchased RITU and Alibaba bought AutoNavi.

II) Auto Makers

Car makers make their presence in HD maps mainly through M&As and self-building. For example, Toyota adopted onboard camera data to build HD maps via crowdsourcing, while Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW jointly acquired HERE, a map provider under Nokia. Automakers-led layout could help promote the data traffic between HD maps and autonomous driving. Moreover, auto makers can fully open CAN bus port internally, which would bring benefits to the testing of HD map-based autonomous driving scheme.