Skyhook Wireless Brings Wi-Fi Location to Symbian OS

Skyhook Wireless, provider of the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) has demonstrated Wi-Fi positioning on the latest version of Symbian OS, v9.5. The collaborative work between the two partner companies demonstrates support for SkyhookÃ's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) by SymbianÃ's LBS architecture, enabling fast and accurate location acquisition in urban and indoor environments.

In addition to the increased adoption of cell phone based vehicle navigation, there has been an explosion of new and interesting location based services in recent months. Some of these new services include pedestrian navigation, local search and advertising, friend finding, social networking, local events and geo-tagging of photos. These new applications require location technology that works everywhere. "Because rural areas and highways are not the most lucrative markets for location based services, handsets that combine SkyhookÃ's Wi-Fi location with other location technologies to ensure functionality in metro areas and indoors will generate the largest revenue," said Patrick Connolly, research director at IMS Research.

In order for location based services (LBS) to continue its accelerated growth trajectory, location sensing technology has to be "consumer grade," and must quickly and accurately provide location information in the places where these applications are used. While existing mobile location technology such as A-GPS and cellular triangulation are an important part of the solution, these technologies have accuracy and availability issues indoors and in urban environments. The Wi-Fi Positioning System can be easily integrated with SymbianÃ's LBS architecture to address these issues and to optimize location accuracy, coverage, and time to fix across all environments.

"SkyhookÃ's Wi-Fi Positioning System is a good illustration of the diverse location acquisition support of our LBS architecture," said Mike Whittingham, VP ecosystem development, Symbian. "ItÃ's an innovative solution that will enable the future revenue opportunities of location-based services."

"Symbian is the leading provider of smartphone operating systems, and this collaboration represents an important milestone for Skyhook Wireless," said Mike Shean, vice president of business development for Skyhook Wireless. "This demonstration shows how Wi-Fi-based positioning can be used by Symbian OS-based devices to enable many innovative and location aware applications."

Posted to the site on 21st October 2008