WiFiSlam Acquisition Expected to Have Little Impact on Apple

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has bought WiFiSlam, a company with technology that allows mobile devices to show the location of their owners. Some press outlets believe that Apple will use this technology to fix its broken map software so it can better compete with Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google Maps. But skepticism seems to have trumped the belief that this plan will work.

According to ZDNet:

This acquisition though, is not expected to have significant impact toward Apple as the Cupertino-based company is still struggling to recover from its “Maps fiasco”, Loo Wee Teck, Euromonitor’s global head of consumer electronics research, observed.

And:

A large part of the battle is also determined by the smartphones on which the maps will be loaded and utilized, Loo added. Android-based smartphones’ “unassailable” lead over iPhones will not change with Apple’s acquisition of WiFiSlam, he added.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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