Alibaba’s (NYSE:BABA) Amap, which is similar to Google Maps (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL), reached a new high of 360M daily active users on Wednesday, the first day of China’s “Golden Week” holiday, the company announced today.
Alibaba shares were up 4.6% during Thursday morning market action.
The start of the holiday, which is a peak travel and shopping period for China and coincides with National Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival, also featured the first wide-scale deployment of Amap’s new artificial intelligence capabilities. Amap’s AI assistant, Xiaogao, handled more than 2.6B user requests on October 1.
Amap also released an AI-powered road safety alert system dubbed “Eagle Eye Guardian, that issued more than 290M alerts for “unusual driving behaviors.” What’s more, to help boost its engagement with businesses and drive commerce, it released Street Stars, an AI-powered ranking system for businesses.
“To better support merchant partners, Amap also recently announced a one-year annual fee exemption for restaurants,” Alibaba said. “This initiative and other support measures, like offline spending subsidies, have led to significant growth in the number of new restaurant merchants joining.”
In comparison, Google Maps reports it has more than 2B monthly active users and features more than 250M businesses and places of interest. Google Maps is currently blocked in mainland China, prompting locals and visitors to utilize Alibaba’s Amap or Baidu Maps (BIDU).
The Golden Week holiday could provide a sales boost for Apple (AAPL), as China’s consumer subsidies for iPhones remain in effect. The holiday was also increased this year to eight days instead of seven.