The reports are now confirmed. Apple has acquired the indoor location tracking company, WiFiSLAM, hinting at the features that could possibly be coming to the iOS devices from the company. According to the Wall Street Journal Digits, the acquisition was made for $20 million.
WiFiSLAM was the startup which was founded by Joseph Huang, a former Google intern and a Stanford graduate, serves a unique purpose. Which is, it gives its users the ability to track their location inside the house, where the GPS signals are pretty weak. Interestingly, the accuracy of the system is close to 10 feet, and it uses the WiFi signals to check the location and also perfect the accuracy.
Lets now take a quick look at what WiFiSLAM is, and why Apple has acquired them. Usually, acquisitions doesn’t happen without a reason, and without a strong cause. The same applies to WiFiSLAM and Apple. WiFiSLAM was solving the problem where people were not able to locate themselves when inside a house or a closed chamber. This was primarily due to the weak GPS signals entering into the house, whatsoever. But then, WiFiSLAM (WiFi Simultaneous Location And Mapping) locates a users’ movement inside the house, using the WiFi Signals.
Now, there might be multiple reasons for this acquisition. One, Apple would probably integrate the service with its controversial Maps application on iOS devices, allowing its users to locate themselves, even when they’re inside their house. Two, the company might take advantage of the algorithm, and integrate it with the Maps service, to do something like what Google has done. Like to know the interior structure of a house or an office. Three, Apple might crowdsource the service to allow its users to create their own interior mapping solutions and share it with Apple and other services.
Apple is no stranger to the WiFi GPS tracking systems. If you remember the Original iPhone’s keynote by Steve Jobs, he would have mentioned that use of Skyhook, which uses the nearby WiFi signals and cell phone towers to locate a device. We just can’t wait to see what Apple has got for us in iOS 7, which should be coming out at this year’s WWDC 2013.
The SDK which WiFiSLAM has been providing to its third party developers would be stopped pretty soon. The average turn around time for Apple to integrate a service into its system is 16 months. And we wish WiFiSLAM takes the same amount of time too.