Indoor Positioning Startup Wifarer CEO Quits, Now Works for Apple

Philip Stanger, the CEO and co-founder of Wifarer, an indoor positioning startup which offers tools to help consumers navigate malls, museums and other venues, has quit the company to work for Apple, TechCrunch is reporting. Wifarer, which was founded in 2010 in Victoria, B.C., is now run by new CEO Lise Murphy, who is Philip’s wife and was previously designated as VP of Marketing.

Wifarer content management system

It was previously suspected that Wifarer could be yet another indoor positioning acquisition for Apple. But as it turns out, the company is not shutting down. In fact, Murphy has said that Wifarer is “poised to introduce some exciting new IPS [indoor positioning system] solutions for both iOS and Android”. She added that these new solutions will offer class leading levels of accuracy and consistency not previously seen in current IPS solutions.

“Possibly, Wifarer didn’t have any tech Apple wanted (its patents are still pending), the company didn’t want to sell, wanted to wait to see if its patents came through, or didn’t want to sell at the price Apple would have paid. After all, Apple is notorious for not overpaying for acquisitions, which is why it reportedly “lost” Nest to Google, for instance. It didn’t want to pay out something in the billions for Nest, after referencing its own sales channel data. Triple-digit millions, sure. Not billions.”

Wifarer declined to respond to questions about fundraising challenges or customer traction and growth.

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