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Indoor Location Tech co YFIND acquired by Ruckus Wireless

Reports (1, 2, 3) are saying that Singapore-based YFind was acquired by Silicon Valley-based Ruckus Wireless.

YFind, profiled in our report on indoor location positioning technologies, delivers location positioning for WiFi-enabled smartphones, along with user movement analytics for site owners.

YFind's core technology positions phones using Wi-Fi fingerprinting running on the smartphones, so it has trouble running on iPhones, because of the well-known iOS problem delivering received signal strength data to applications. But many are speculating that Ruckus Wireless will incorporate YFind's positioning into its Wi-Fi access points, to track locations of any Wi-Fi enabled phone within range.  (We explained the difference between positioning running on phones and in the network in this previous blog article.)

YFind's positioning uses more sophisticated Wi-Fi fingerprinting than many others, with probabilistic methods for handling areas between fingerprints and periodic fluctuations in signal strengths, both of which challenge basic fingerprinting approaches.

YFind has also worked heavily on their analytics, in which "footfall analysis" analyzes where phone users walk and where they stop to look at things. This information is increasingly valuable to site owners, and both Aruba and Cisco have acquired companies in this area.

Grizzly Analytics predicted that 2013 would be a year with acquisitions and consolidation of start-up comapanies in indoor location, and this is looking truer and truer each month. Who will be the next start-up to be acquired? There are more than 50 more start-ups in this area, so stay tuned....

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