WifiSLAM, a business which provides indoor mobile location services through the use of Wi-Fi and the variation of signal strength has been purchased by Apple for $20 million according to the Wall Street Journal. The company's co-founders include a former Google employee and, according to investor site AngelList, is being backed by Don Dodge who has worked at both Google and Microsoft.
This move isn't too surprising as Apple is looking to continue to build its arsenal and gain a competitive edge against Google's mapping services ever since the day they tried dumping Google's mapping service for the iPhone and iPad. That move was met with wide backlash from customers and ended with the firing of Scott Forstall who had been head of the mapping team and the return of Google maps back to the iOS earlier this year.
Google is currently offering indoor mapping in certain locations like sports venues and airports and other company's such as Samsung, Nokia and Qualcomm are all looking to get into the game as well by partnering with companies that can provide indoor location based services.
As indoor location-based technology continues to improve, retailers will be looking to take advantage by sending out targeted offerings to users or the data can then be shared across social networking sites like Facebook or Google+ for additional user engagement. This type of information can be of great benefit to merchants which is why all these companies are looking to get a competitive edge and take market share for location-based mapping.
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