Apple is aggressively focusing on indoor cartography in order to compete with Google’s venue mapping efforts. And it appears that Apple is ahead of Google, because of the iBeacon technology that it has been planting in venues for some time.
“iBeacons don’t specifically create indoor maps,” Jim Edwards wrote for Business Insider. “Rather, Apple appears to be hoping to persuade building owners to upload a map of their space, and then iBeacons could in theory be used to automatically validate the map’s accuracy as iPhones receive their signals. That automation would be a huge step—currently, Google is validating its indoor maps by hand, using a human to check each uploaded map, we’re told.”
Edwards wrote that there’s a fortune to be made in the indoor maps race.
“Indoor maps could be even more lucrative, because users are just a few inches from the products being sold and the checkout where they pay for them,” Edwards wrote. For example, “iBeacons will let marketers know that a shopper is in the candy aisle, looking not just at the chocolate display, but at the milk-chocolate-macadamia-nut section. It’s that precise.”
Please read the Business Insider article for the full story, and let us know your thoughts about indoor mapping in your venues.
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