Slowly but surely, the sensor and chip manufacturing industry seem to be a) talking to each other / buying each other, or b) talking about the need to make location work on mobile devices.

It’s about time.

When I was at 3GSM (sorry, now called WMC, or MWC or something …), all the GPS chip manufacturers were singing a very lonely song about how GPS was not sufficient for mobile phone-based apps and network-based AGPS non-existent in Europe (or ridiculously expensive to the App Dev guys). Nobody even thought of muttering the word "sensor". When pushed, only Broadcom’s location guru (ex- Global Locate) mentioned digital compass, but that’s not exactly it, is it…

So it warmed my heart to read the PR from Sensor Platform, specifically:

“Sensor Platforms has assembled leaders in the fields of accelerometers, micromagnetometers, algorithms and precision analog technology to address the rich opportunities opening up as the demand for location awareness and motion sensing grows exponentially.”

I am not sure what all those sensors are, but if they are new and useful for Location, we should all find out.

LeBoss