Bing Maps says Israel, Japan and South Korea don't exist

Move over Apple Maps, Bing Maps on Windows Phone 8 has lost three countries out of the 110 it covers. This happened despite the use of data from Nokia's Navteq that has been integrated into the Windows Phone 8 application. According to Bing Maps, there is no Israel, Japan or South Korea. That is despite good maps for Israel and Japan being available on the desktop version of Bing Maps. And Japan was looking pretty good on the previous version of Bing Maps for Windows Phone.

Is losing three countries worse than misnaming towns and benchmarks like Apple did, or are both things just as bad? Apple's mapping app was so bad that Apple CEO Tim Cook not only apologized, but also recommended using rival's mapping apps. What caused the mapping data from all three countries not to be supported on Bing Maps? While we don't have the answer for that, we would bet that developers are hard at work right now to allow the maps of all three countries to work on the Windows Phone 8 version of Bing Maps.

We do have one question. If a tree falls in a country that is not supported on Bing Maps, does it make a sound?

source: WMPoweruser