Apple Acquires Indoor Navigation Startup

Silicon Valley-based indoor navigation company WiFiSLAM has been purchased by Apple. The US information technology giant reportedly paid USD20 million for the two-year-old startup. WiFiSLAM has developed methods for mobile apps to detect a phone user’s indoor location using Wi-Fi signals.

The main product of WiFiSLAM smartphone is a location-based mobile app that allows users to pinpoint their location (and the location of their friends) in real-time to 2.5m accuracy using only ambient Wi-Fi signals that are already present in buildings. WiFiSLAM is a small company with only a couple of employees, interestingly composed of a mix of former Google software engineers and Stanford graduates.

Apple seems to want to boost its own location services in order to become more competitive with Google, which has already been offering indoor maps of public buildings for some time. It is likely that Apple will use the startup to enrich its Maps app with indoor-mapping. According to the Wall Street Journal, indoor GPS could help app developers produce indoor mapping technology and new types of retail and social networking apps.