Amazon Location Service is Now Generally Available

Location and mapping are vital aspects of many mobile applications. However, developers face significant barriers to integrating location functionality into their applications. Integrating location services with your other mobile and web services can be difficult and time-consuming. Plus, there are issues around cost, privacy and security.

First announced as a preview back in December 2020, Amazon Location Service is intended to help developers build web and mobile applications that include location-based capabilities. Amazon Location Service provides mapping data, tracking, geofencing, and integration with AWS services. On June 1^st 2021, Amazon Location Service became generally available and it also included two new features: routing and satellite imagery

Amazon Location Service provides the following features:

• Maps – Maps enable you to visualize location information.
• Places—Provide point-of-interest search functionality to your applications. Places allow you to convert addresses into geographic coordinates in latitude and longitude and convert a coordinate into a street address.
• Routing – Enables your application to request the travel time, distance, and all directions between two locations. This makes it possible for your application to obtain accurate travel-time estimates based on live road and traffic information.
• Tracking — Enables you to retrieve the current and historical location of the devices running your tracking-enabled applications.
• Geofences — Give your application the ability to detect and act when a tracked device enters or exits a predefined geographical boundary.
• Satellite Imagery — Enhances the information displayed in your maps with satellite images.

Amazon Location Service provides SDKs for Android, iOS, and web. It can be accessed through the back-end SDKs listed on the AWS tools page.

Amazon Location Service is available with three different pricing plans:

• Request-Based Usage — Request-Based Usage pricing plan provides access to location data that is billed based on each request your application makes to the service. This plan offers the Amazon Location Service free tier for the first three months.
• Mobile Asset Tracking –The Mobile Asset Tracking plan provides a predictable and fixed monthly price per active mobile asset. You are only charged for the mobile assets that have reported their position to the service that month. This plan is for tracking mobile assets that are not routing or route-optimizing mobile assets. Mobile devices used by consumers for personal use are not considered mobile assets.
• Mobile Asset Management – The Mobile Asset Management plan also provides a predictable fixed monthly price per active mobile asset. Here again, you are only charged for the mobile assets that have reported their position to the service that month and mobile devices used by consumers for personal use are not considered mobile assets.. This plan is for routing or route-optimizing mobile assets that use Amazon Location Service Maps, Places, or Routes.

Amazon Location Service is available now in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) regions. You can learn more at Amazon Location Service.