GigaOM Pro

Nokia, Samsung and 20 other companies have formed the In-Location Alliance, a consortium aimed at increasing the adoption of indoor positioning and location-based services. The group issued a press release saying it hopes to develop “solutions offering high accuracy, low power consumption, mobility, implementability and usability,” and it expects indoor-location consumer apps begin to come to market next year. Indoor location is a promising concept, to be sure, but there are still two major hurdles here: Indoor mapping still has a long way to go, and GPS isn’t accurate enough to be very valuable indoors. (That’s especially true vertically, which is crucial for people in multi-story buildings.) GPS will get better as new satellites launch in coming years, so the new initiative is a great step in the right direction, but don’t expect to see a lot of movement here for a while.