Skyhook Wireless has made a hugely important strategic move today, not only cementing their future in the mobile handset market, but ensuring that positioning in mobile handsets is a helluva lot more accurate. The company has licensed Qualcomm their Wi-Fi Position System (WPS) for use in former’s gpsOne positioning system, used in over 400 million handsets globally.
So what does this mean? First off, it cements Skyhook Wireless as the world’s foremost Wi-Fi positioning technology provider and places them in an enviable position compared to the Garmin’s and TomTom’s of the world. They’ll be around for awhile. Second off, end consumers like you and me who own handsets with Qualcomm GPS chips will find ourselves on the end of faster positioning fixes, and fewer drop in urban canyons and tunnels.
It will also be a boon to location-based application developers who achieve greater usability for their products, thanks to an innovation completely unrelated to their own work. I’m sure Qualcomm realizes this and I wonder if that’s why the company has released the brand new Brew Mobile Platform SDK today.
Suitable for use in both lower and higher-end handsets, and all 3G technologies, the Brew Mobile Platform SDK also integrates Adobe Flash bringing a whole new level of functionality to mobile apps. Is it possible we could see the location-based YouTube for mobile in the near future. Who knows, but wouldn’t it be cool?
And I think that just might be Qualcomm’s thinking. A member of the Open Screen Project, Qualcomm is looking to bring such rich user experiences to all screens: the TV, computer, and mobile phone.
(Image Credit: Skyhook Wireless)
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