Microsoft Steps in the WiFi Positioning Market

There is always a good news and a bad news having a a giant entering a niche market. The field will get more attention and finance, but the air is expected to grow really thick.

Microsoft tracks WiFi for new mapping system

In a new initiative, Microsoft has dispatched cars to trawl many city and suburban streets across the U.S. to locate the signals sent out by millions of short-range home and office wireless (or WiFi) networks. The unusual move, now being repeated in the U.K. and some other countries, is part of a plan to create a ground-based location system as an alternative to the GPS satellite system.

In the same time I stumbled accross “Skyhook lands customer for its wi-fi location service” that mentions that Skyhook Wireless signed its first customer for its wi-fi location service. A Tennessee-based company that provides data security, tracking and recovery services for PCs and laptops, will use Skyhook’s WiFi positioning technology to help track and recover stolen laptops for commercial and individual clients.

Skyhook needs users to survive, because they are the ones updating the AP database.