Apple Could Be Preparing An Indoor Mapping App

When it comes to mapping apps, for the most part they are for outdoor areas which makes sense. After all if you’re inside a building like a mall or an office, you can easily refer to the building’s directory and common sense to find your way around. Given that such buildings aren’t terrible big or complicated, it doesn’t really make sense for an indoor map.

However it seems that Apple could be on the verge of creating one. According to a recent sighting in the iTunes App Store as spotted by developer Steve Troughton-Smith, Apple has a hidden app called “Indoor Survey App” which as you can see in the screenshot above, will “Enable indoor positioning”.

According to the app’s description, “By dropping ‘points’ on a map within the Survey App, you indicate your position within the venue as you walk through. As you do so, the indoor Survey App measures the radio frequency (RF) signal data and combines it with an iPhone’s sensor data. The end result is indoor positioning without the need to install special hardware.”

What this seems to suggest is that Apple could be looking at creating some kind of indoor mapping solution. This could result in a separate app entirely, or it could be used to enhance its own native Maps app. Unfortunately since Apple tends to keep mum on these sort of things, we have no idea what the company is up to and we guess we’ll just have to wait until Apple makes it official.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: Apps, iOS