Skyhook Reels In Apple, iPhone for Geolocation

"It’s a watershed event for location," said Ted Morgan, CEO and Founder of Skyhook as over 4 million iPhones can automatically determine the phone’s position. I caught up with Morgan as he was busily running around San Francisco demonstrating the iPhone’s use of Skyhooks Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) that became available in a software upgrade from Apple Computer yesterday. "It’s a huge deal for us," said Morgan who can now say that his company geo-enabled the iPhone and iPod Touch, something I’ve vented about in previous blog posts.

But there are some trade offs. The time to first fix via AT&T’s EDGE network "can be a bit sleepy," said Morgan, which takes about 5 seconds. Once locked in, the map interfaces offers a "confidence circle" to show the users approximate location. The circle can be larger if a Wi-Fi hot spot in not identified and has to drop back to a cell tower location.

Skyhook continues to upgrate its database of 23 million hot spots and Morgan sees that number growing to 30 million pretty quickly. Expansion plans are ongoing in Europe and Asia.