Logging cellphone locations - the real purpose

When researching next-generation location technologies for our report Mobile Location-Based Services 2012-2015, we looked a lot at the location logging scandal that got a lot of attention in April. It's clear that most smartphone platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, log the locations of Wi-Fi networks and cellular cells that the phones detect. This data is then used to provide location services when GPS is turned off or unavailable.

What we found, however, is that many companies are researching other uses for location logs as well. The biggest use is user profiling, whereby the places a user goes can be used to develop a profile of the user's activities. This profile is used to personalize services and target promotions and advertisements.

That Google is doing this wasn't a surprise. Microsoft has also been researching this for a long time, using location logs and other data to learn about "life patterns" and "user activities, goals, and context." Nokia also has a long-running research project in this area, which appears to be continuing even since Nokia's alliance with Microsoft. Sony Ericsson is also researching the area.

What's more surprising is that Nokia's research in this area, since their alliance with Microsoft, appears to be working on location logging on Android and iOS devices. It'll be interesting to see if and how this comes to market.

What will consumers think of all this? Many will probably cry "big brother!" but many others are likely to like the personalization and usability that these profiles may bring. If phones can build user profiles that save you button clicks and touch-screen swipes, you'll probably be happy.

More details are available in the Grizzly Analytics report (click here). Or you can wait to hear about it until it hits market....

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 ...

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Most technology features follow a similar path, from imitation to improvement to transformation. First they imitate something that came before, like telephones imitating the telegraphs of yesteryear. Then they improve on them, like phones entering individual homes. Then they transform the entire endeavor, completely surpassing the previous technology, like phones automatically connecting people without operator involvement, which enabled society to communicate in ways that telegraph users never contemplated. Cellphone cameras are following a similar path. At the beginning cellphone cameras were imitating digital cameras, adding the convenience of carrying only one device but basically doing the same as digital cameras did. Then they improved on them, both with quality improvements and with the ability to share pictures wirelessly without wiring the phone to a computer. The ability to instantly share and synchronize pictures from a phone is somewhat transf...

See great indoor location tech from the 2017 testbed

The videos from the Indoor Location Testbed at GeoIoT World 2017 are now released! Here is your chance to see how these solutions performed in our real-world evaluation, in the videos below. The testbed evaluated each solution by walking around a real-world venue, the GeoIoT World 2017 conference, measuring performance at 10 pre-selected points. Click here for the testbed report, which analyzes each solution's performance in a wide variety of metrics, including real-time accuracy, accuracy stabilization, consistency, latency, floor change, first fix, setup time & more. Let's start with BlooLoc's tag-based solution, which achieved accuracy under 2m in real-time and under 1.5m after stabilization: Then let's look at the infrastructure-free solution from GipsTech , which achieved accuracy under 2m without using any beacons or radio signals: Next is GipsTech's solution with BLE added: Next is BlooLoc's phone-based solution: Fin...

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