It was announced recently that Layar, the popular augmented reality browser app, has partnered with Skyhook wireless to integrate its advanced positioning technology for its Android application.
Layar is a rather impressive app to start with, it uses any database with geo-location information that can easily be turned in a content layer, and then adds that layer to a repository that users can choose from. While looking through the phone’s camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, tourist information of the area, play a live game, etc.
Since location plays such a large role in the functionality of the app, the addition of Skyhook for positioning made perfect sense. “Because the purpose of Layar is to only show content within a user’s immediate surroundings, precise location is critical for our app,” said Raimo van der Klein, CEO of Layar. “The Skyhook SDK provided greatly improved accuracy and speed over the native Android platform.”
Skyhook is the unofficial leader in geo-location technology and fulfills hundreds of millions of location requests every day across millions of handsets, netbooks and cameras. Skyhook uses a location system that utilizes a combination of Wi-Fi, cellular and GPS readings to produce a single, accurate location quickly and in all environments. “Hyperlocal apps like Layar require exact positioning to show a user what’s nearby,” said Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook. “Integrating our SDK into the Layar app is the perfect solution to achieve the best location results across all Android devices.”
