Skip to main content

An ace up Google's sleeve in Bluetooth-based Indoor Positioning?

Everyone's talking these days about Google's new indoor mapping, which they say will track a cellphone's location as a person walks around a mall or airport.  This would obviously be a huge breakthrough, now that everyone's gotten used to using cellphones for navigation and location services, and would naturally like to keep doing so while walking around a mall.

Nokia just counter-attacked with an update on their own indoor navigation research, which uses Bluetooth-based "beacons" to improve indoor positioning.  Of course, this research isn't new, it's a continuation of work at Nokia that dates back several years.  But the new announcement places this new capability in the context of new Windows-based smartphones.

Of course, there are dozens of companies working on indoor positioning.  Grizzly Analytics reported many of these in our report on next-generation location services, and we'll soon have an updated report out on indoor location positioning which analyzes research by Google, Nokia, RIM, Qualcomm, Samsung and many more.

In the meantime, here's a fun fact that nobody has reported in the recent flurry of articles on the race between Nokia and Google to indoor location services:  Who do you think holds a granted U.S. patent on using Bluetooth for indoor positioning?

Google.

A U.S. patent titled Location determination for mobile units was granted back in 2004 to Motorola.  It discussed, in terminology that feels outdated this many years later, using fixed Bluetooth devices with known locations to track mobile devices that are also Bluetooth-equipped.

Yep, that's the same as using beacons to position smartphones.

This patent is presumably soon to be owned by Google, with their acquisition of Motorola Mobility and their huge patent portfolio. 

Of course, there are many differences between the methods discussed in this patent and Nokia's research.  Motorola's method did the computation in the cloud, while Nokia's looking at location determination on the handset.  And Nokia's looking at more sophisticated algorithms for triangulation and positioning. 

But it's fascinating nonetheless that Nokia's big announcement of Bluetooth-based positioning, that they and everyone thought (with justification) would differentiate them strongly from Google's approach, would step right into the area of a Google-owned patent.

Want to learn more about research underway at a wide variety of companies in the area of indoor positioning?  Check back soon for an up-to-date and insightful report on the subject from Grizzly Analytics.

Popular posts from this blog

33 Indoor Location Related Start-up Acquisitions

  Acquisitions Continue in the Indoor Location Industry; Grizzly Analytics Shows Price Growth at the High End and Continuity at the Low End New York, NY, February 22, 2021 - Despite the recent pandemic, M&A deals in the indoor location area have maintained a steady pace of 4-5 deals a year. At the high end of the spectrum, prices have increased to up to $400 Million for the highest priced recent deal and $165 Million for the second highest. At the lower end, many earlier stage companies have been acquired in the $2-3 Million range. A newly updated report from Grizzly Analytics gives prices and strategic details for 33 acquisitions in the indoor location area.  While the highest priced indoor location acquisitions have historically involved chip-based technologies, recent acquisitions have been more varied. “A few years ago the focus of indoor location M&A was all around pure localization technologies. The biggest deal to date is in fact for a chip-based localization ...
Read more

Intel acquiring gesture recognition start-up InVision Biometrics

News broke this morning ( here , here ) that Intel is about to acquire Israeli start-up company InVision Biometrics .  The company has developed 3D sensor technology that recognizes human movement, including gestures, and interprets them for a wide variety of applications. The company's technology is based on, and apparently builds on, research by Professor Ron Kimmel at the Technion Institute of Technology.  Professor Kimmel has a number of patents in this and other areas, some owned by the Technion and some licensed to companies. For Israel, dubbed the Start-Up Nation , this acquisition continues a number of trends.  It's Intel's second acquisition of an Israeli start-up company in October alone, having acquired Telmap at the beginning of the month.  Both acquisitions are interesting in that they move Intel into new areas that have been previously handled by software.  Grizzly Analytics predicts that Intel will acquire more start-ups in software areas th...
Read more

33 Indoor Location Technologies at Mobile World Congress 2017

The number of companies exhibiting indoor location technologies at the 2017 Mobile World Congress (MWC) skyrocketed to 33! Before MWC started, we released our Guide to Indoor Location at MWC, with 23 companies: During the conference we notified our guide recipients of 10 other indoor location exhibitors that we saw. ( Sign up here to receive our guide and to be on our mailing list for next year's MWC.) This is many more indoor location related exhibits that previous years. The area is growing by leaps and bounds! Our recent report on indoor location technologies analyzed and profiled almost 200 companies! Here are some videos, so you can see the technologies in action, followed by a list of the other indoor location companies that were at MWC. First up is Philips Lighting, with high-accuracy indoor location positioning based on LED light modulation and visible light communication (VLC) technology: Next comes Estimote, makers of Bluetooth (BLE) beacons, who int...
Read more