Skyhook Wireless

Skyhook is a location technology company based in Boston, Massachusetts, specializing in location positioning, context, and intelligence. Founded in 2003, Skyhook originally began by geolocating Wi-Fi access points leveraging the existing practice of Wardriving commercially. Since then, Skyhook has been focusing on hybrid positioning technology, incorporating with Wi-Fi, GPS, cell towers, IP address, and device sensors to improve device location. The company was acquired by Qualcomm in 2022.

History
Skyhook was founded in 2003 by Ted Morgan and Michael Shean. Skyhook's database was initially gathered through wardriving, when the company sent teams of drivers around the United States, Canada, Western Europe and selected Asian countries to map out Wi-Fi hot spots.

Skyhook powers location-based services for companies such as Apple, Samsung, Sony, HP, Dell, Sharp, Philips and MapQuest.

The firm received its first patent in 2007, and as of early 2020 holds over 650 patents across the United States and foreign markets.

In 2010, Skyhook sued Google over the use of Wi-Fi locator technology in cell phones. The complaint claimed that Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President for Engineering, gave Sanjay K. Jha, Chief Executive of Motorola's mobile devices' division, a “stop ship” order, preventing Motorola from shipping phones with the Android operating system using the Skyhook software. The litigation was settled in 2015 with Skyhook receiving $90 million in a settlement with the tech giant, a third of which was consumed by legal fees. The figure was revealed in a securities filing by Liberty Broadband Corp., Skyhook's Colorado-based parent company.

In February 2014, Skyhook Wireless was acquired by True Position Inc, a subsidiary of Liberty Broadband. In 2016, the two companies merged under the Skyhook brand, which now rests under Liberty Broadband, which is a part of the Liberty Media family.

In 2016, Skyhook introduced a range of products tailored for the advertising technology sector: Retailer Personas, Power Personas, and On-Demand Personas. Leveraging Skyhook's processing capabilities handling billions of location data points, these solutions enable marketers to finely tune consumer targeting by analyzing past locations, enabling personalized mobile marketing campaigns.

In February 2019, Skyhook announced that it was working closely with Qualcomm Technologies to bring Wi-Fi positioning and location-assistance services based on Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear platforms.

In September 2019, Mozilla announced changes to commercial use of its Mozilla Location Service, which resulted in SailfishOS location services not being able to use the service anymore. The changes were made due to patent infringement allegations by Skyhook.

In February 2020, Deutsche Telekom announced that Skyhook was among its new technology partners for IoT Solution Optimizer, an ecosystem developed to “scale-up IoT business faster, and support enterprises of all sizes wanting to succeed in the Internet of Things.“

In April 2020, Skyhook partnered with Kyocera to provide accurate location services to DuraXV Extreme, a rugged flip phone.

In 2022, Qualcomm acquired Skyhook.

Coverage
As of 2020, Skyhook uses a reference network composed of the known locations of over 5 billion Wi-Fi access points and 250 million cellular towers to pinpoint location. Skyhook's coverage area includes most major metro areas in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The system can also be used to enhance the performance of GPS-enabled devices where GPS reception is weak.

Precision Location SDK
Skyhook offers a software development kit (SDK), which allows developers to create location-enabled applications using Skyhook's software-only Hybrid Positioning System on the platform of their choice.

The SDK supports Android 2.2 (Froyo), 2.3.x (Gingerbread), 4.0.x (Ice Cream Sandwich), 4.1.x (Jelly Bean), 4.4 (KitKat), 5.0-5.1 (Lollipop), and 6.0 (Marshmallow), including forked platforms such as the Kindle Fire, along with Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Context SDK
In 2013, Skyhook launched Context, which uses Skyhook's location network along with venue data to give mobile users awareness of the world around them. It enables personalized mobile experiences and enhanced revenue opportunities using 1st Party Location Network and precisely located venues.

The SDK requires iOS 6.0+ and a device with region monitoring support: iPhone 4+, iPad (Wi-Fi only) 3+, iPad (Wi-Fi + Cell) 2+, iPad Mini, iPad Air, iPod Touch 5+. The Android SDK is supported on Android 2.2 (Froyo), 2.3.x (Gingerbread), 4.0.x (Ice Cream Sandwich), 4.1.x-4.3 (Jelly Bean), 4.4 (KitKat), 5.0-5.1 (Lollipop), and 6.0 (Marshmallow) including forked platforms such as the Kindle Fire.

Competitors
Skyhook's main competitors include Google, HERE, Unwired Labs and Combain. The latter was sued by Skyhook in 2019, but an agreement was reached and Skyhook and Combain announced a collaboration in a common press release issued in April 2020.