Using maps on Windows Mobile

Question

I'm experimenting with maps on different mobile platforms. Getting Google Maps to work on Android was easy, following this tutorial. Getting the same to work on Windows Mobile is a different matter. Any suggestions on how to do this?

• Google Maps API doesn't seem to support Windows Mobile. Guess I could try using Google Static Maps, but this FAQ entry states: "Note that it is not permitted to use the Static Maps API outside of browser based applications."

• I gave a shot at Developing a Mobile Application Using Bing Maps Web Services, but this seems to require a "Bing Maps for Enterprise Account" which is not free for commercial use? I signed up for a free developer account, but when adding the reference to https://staging.common.virtualearth.net/find-30/common.asmx VS2008 returns:

  There was an error downloading 'https://staging.common.virtualearth.net/find-30/common.asmx'. The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad Request. There was an error downloading 'https://staging.common.virtualearth.net/find-30/common.asmx/$metadata'. The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad

...so I haven't completed that tutorial yet. Anyways, Bing Maps seems more cumbersome to develop for compared to Google Maps. My question is, what's the easiest way to get maps working for your own applications on Windows Mobile?

Answer 1

We recently wrapped up a project using Bing Maps on a WinMo application and didn't find it too difficult at all. IIRC, the Bing license states that you must pay for a license only if your commercial application does not have a free option. You can develop just about any application without a commercial license using the staging servers. THe only difference we noticed was that the staging server tiles the word "Staging" across the served maps.