Software giant Microsoft, joined by rivals Google and Yahoo, has launched a local mapping service for India, which offers users access to detailed listings and street maps for 9 Cities, business listings across 29 cities, and access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns.

Microsoft's India Development Centre (MSIDC) in Hyderabad has developed the first version of the service, on the PC and mobile at http://maps.live.co.in and http://m.live.co.in.

Live Search Maps on Mobile is a Direct-to-consumer (DTC) service without requiring one-on-one relationships with the mobile carriers. It leverages the Live Search Maps to deliver 2D Mobile Maps, Location Search and Driving Directions and supports Adaptive Rendering for results from Web, News, Instant Answers and Spaces Search.

The nine cities featured in detail include the four metros of New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, along with Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Jaipur. The maps include addresses, roads, localities, landmarks, detailed street maps and places of general interest like monuments, restaurants, hotels and other places of interest.

The coverage of the service will be extended to 30 cities in the future and add features like landmark based driving directions, collections search, and options for enterprise customers and developer community along with satellite imagery.

Launching the service, Rishi Srivastava, Head of consumer & online marketing operations, Microsoft India, said: "Over the last two years, Microsoft has made significant investments into research and development for Live Search, acquired global resources and introduced several new features which we believe are extremely relevant and will deliver great value to our users."