Apple buys WifiSLAM – the indoor location war begins
We know only too well that Google and Apple are rivals when it comes to navigation. So one of the leading news today is that Apple bought the company WifiSLAM – a company specialized in indoor GPS services. The sum Apple has paid for the company, which is also based in the Silicon Valley, is about $20 million.
This information is provided by a person close to Apple. The official statement of Apple after the acquisition was that the company buys other small companies from time to time, but don’t want to throw light on its future plans. There were no further comments. Nobody from WifiSLAM was reached for comments or statements.
WifiSLAM is a two-year old start-up company, which has developed different apps and methods for them to detect where exactly the phone (and, respectively, its owner) is located in the building. The accuracy is within the range of 2.5 metres and the location is detected using the Wi-Fi connection of the phone. The technology created by WifiSLAM has been used by developers of apps for indoor mapping and different social networking and retail apps.
The irony is that Apple is buying the company in order to compete with Google, but one of the creators of WifiSLAM is a former Google employee – the software engineer Joseph Huang. Hopefully, this strategic development move will help Apple stand against Google, especially when last year the Cupertino-based company launched its own rather unsuccessful service. Its data was inaccurate and a great part of the users’ comments were complaints.
Apple surely needs to enhance its maps, especially after the Australian police classified them as life-threatening. According to them, the incorrect directions of the maps resulted the owners of Apple devices to end up lost for hours in the outback. Moreover, Google is already providing indoor navigation, so the competition requires some respond from Apple.
Source: Wall Street Journal
