Indoor Positioning Hot Topic at Upcoming LocNav USA 2011 Conference

August 23, 2011

The LocNav USA team recently published an interview with leading experts from Skyhook (Kipp Jones, Chief Architect), Ekahau (Arttu Huhtiniemi, Vice President, Product Management), Sony Ericsson (Magnus Persson, Specialist - Location Based Services Technology), OGC (Raj Singh, Director Interoperability Programs) and Sprint (Phyllis Reuther, Manager, Advanced Technology Research Lab: Mobile Analytics Group). The conference is taking place in San Jose on Oct 18-19.

The participants in the interview include: 
The first question was "Which key technologies are driving ubiquitous location and why?". 
 
We particularly like the answer from Arttu Huhtiniemi (Ekahau), who said "Firstly, smartphone platforms.  Low-cost, rich UI devices are now available everywhere. Secondly, ubiquitous WI-Fi."
 
We believe smartphones are the leading contributor and enabler for indoor location technologies. Millions of people are now walking around indoors with powerful sensors (on the phone) built in which can detect orientation and movement. Also, at micello, we've spoken to a number of companies building wifi-based indoor positioning solutions. With wifi-hotspots, its even possible to determine which floor level someone might be on. 
 
The second question was about the key technical challenges in delivering location everywhere, all of the time. 
 
Magnus Persson (Sony Ericsson) said "The key challenge is collecting the data that is needed to create high accuracy positioning solutions." 
 
We also liked Arttu Huhtiniemi's (Ekahau) answer that "there are no real technical challenges, but many challenges related to business models, applications, and availability of indoor maps."
 
Don't worry Arttu, we're going all out to build the worlds largest collection of indoor maps! We're working with a number of indoor positioning companies, providing them access to our indoor maps to help accelerate them to market. 
 
Third, why does precise positioning indoors matter so much?
 
Raj Singh (OGC) said "Precise indoor positioning matters in a host of applications, such as finding locations like shops, police, rest rooms, or (check-in) counters inside of airports, shopping malls, or public buildings. In an emergency response situation indoor navigation could provide escape routes from buildings and fastest routes for rescue personnel to a disaster area."
 
We were reminded by President Obama's State of the Union where he talks about putting indoor maps in the hands of firefighters. It would be incredible to track the movement of firefighters inside a building, and with the context of a map, help them find their way around. We strongly agree with Raj that precise indoor positioning will tremendously help a number of applications and grow the indoor location-services ecosystem. 
 
Fourth, which part of the value chain is set to profit most from ubiquitous location?  And what role will mobile carriers have?
 
We completely agree with Magnus Persson (Sony Ericsson) that "Application and end user service developers" will benefit.
 
We're working hard at micello to provide the richest set of indoor venue maps as a complement to the indoor positioning companies. 
 
Fifth, will a lack of viable business models hinder the adoption of indoor mapping and navigation? How long before we see widespread pick-up?
 
We think all the answers from the participants are good, however, the time estimate should be reduced by half. The number of inbound requests we see for companies interested in indoor maps is phenomenal, from retailers, airlines, convention centers, hospitals, conferences, hotels, casinos... we really are at the cusp of a massive hockey-stick growth in this industry! 
 
Phyllis Reuther (Sprint): "The advertising ecosystem has been slow to adopt mobile targeted advertising and it may be another five years before indoor navigation support and targeted couponing ecosystems have worked out enough bugs for the revenue distribution along the value chain to be equitable and sustainable. However, ubiquitous location awareness will be disruptive in other areas, such as market research and digital out-of-home advertising validation."
 
Magnus Persson (Sony Ericsson): "Yes, and the lack of well-defined formats to create indoor maps, which would make smaller players knowing for sure that the data will not be useless in 1 year.  My hopes are on during 2012."
 
Arttu Huhtiniemi (Ekahau): "Yes, it does. We estimate that indoor positioning starts with retail chains first."
 
Kipp Jones (Skyhook): "In 2-5 years we should see the hockey stick growth as the technology matures, costs decrease, and standards are created to scale to full market."