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Name: Wifarer
Quick Pitch: Indoor positioning technology app guides users through large venues.
Genius Idea: Wifarer is partnering with venues to provide smartphone directions and advertising to consumers.
GPS technology works pretty well when driving or walking outside, but it hits a wall indoors. Wifarer is breaking down those walls with a new app that uses indoor positioning technology to steer users through large venues such as malls, airports, convention centers and museums.
The free app, available for iPhone and Android users, has an interactive location directory to help users find a specific store in the mall or terminal at the airport. Wifarer pinpoints the user's location within 4-and-a-half feet, and draws a path to the location the users wants to go.
The big hook here is the app will also show promotions and sales based on a user's location — providing advertisers a new way to catch an audience. Individual stores in a mall can control the ads customers are viewing. Once a customers steps in the store, the brand has complete control over what the app user sees. The store could provide inventory and directions around the store if they wanted. Most stores will likely use this control to target customers with advertising specific to their store.
At a museum, however, the app can pull up supplemental information about a piece of artwork nearby instead of trying lure a visitor into a store.
The app will also collect information valuable to advertisers, such as statistics on where people shop and heat maps showing where the heaviest amount of users travel. Wifarer will charge stores to access the information and navigation within a store.
Philip Stanger, Wifarer's founder and CEO, said the company has found out how to be profitable while still providing a service people want for free.
"Wifarer is the first to achieve the superior indoor positioning technology and user-friendly mobile application experience required, making indoor location-based marketing a reality," he said.
The San Jose, Cali., based startup is still in its early stages, but has made its way into some venues already. Eventually, Wifarer hopes to be in venues across the world. For now, the app will only work in locations Wifarer has partnered with, such as the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Gaylord Opryland in Spain and the Royal BC Museum in Canada. The app will be available for several hundred U.S. venues by the end of 2013.
Do you think indoor navigation is needed? Tell us in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Wifarer and iStock, poba.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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