Indoor Atlas: GPS for Retailers

Indoor Atlas

Is someone watching every where you go?  Seems creepy, but think about how often you use GPS.  You download an app, utilize Google Maps, or use your built-in GPS on your smartphone to find your way to a new or unfamiliar place.  The owner of the mobile app is following you and Google is following you.  But, you're pretty safe once you get inside a store.  You shut off your GPS and now no one knows where you are, right?  Think again.

A Finland-based start-up company, Indoor Atlas, launched its version of people tracking software.  Even where GPS doesn't reach, this software can track you through smartphone's magnetometer. A retail store doesn't have to install any special equipment to utilize this technology.  A building's structure causes a disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field and this technology utilizes that.  Once these disturbances are identified, customers can be pinpointed within 10 centimeters and 6 feet.  

To use this incredible technology, a developer would upload a floor plan and send a representative down each isle of the store to make an accurate map - including the location of items.  This app can be used to make special offers to customers while they are in a specific isle or part of the store.  Mashable created an infographic that showed that 55% of mobile users are using their phone to compare prices during their shopping experiences.  Will this give retailers that use Indoor Atlas the upper hand when it comes to pricing their products competitively?