How Much Does It Cost To Build An Indoor Navigation App?

When you are new to airports or universities or campuses, it might be a tough task to reach your desired destination. But now, finding your way around any corner of the world has become very easy, thanks to GPS (Global Positioning System). But is it perfect for finding the hidden location inside the building?

Suppose you make plans with your friends at a restaurant inside a shopping mall. With GPS, you reach the mall, but you lose your GPS connection as soon as you enter. And now you are asking everyone about the particular location, but no one knows about this hidden restaurant in a multi-storeyed building. Don’t worry! Now, Indoor navigation apps can solve that problem. 

An indoor navigation app works similarly to how GPS outdoor navigation apps work. So, wonder how indoor positioning and navigation apps are different from outdoor navigation apps?

GPS (Global Positioning System) outdoor navigation apps work with GPS satellite signals that usually get lost in crowded places or inside large buildings. However, an indoor navigation app based on Augmented Reality is specially designed for small areas that show your location by accessing the integrated GPS maps. It has inbuilt GPS maps to offer the shortest routes towards destinations. The idea behind indoor positioning and navigation apps is simple: they work efficiently inside the large facilities where GPS tracker fails to locate the destination.

Our dedicated team at Appventurez has been helping to create navigation apps capable of providing benefits for both owners and visitors. These apps can be easily and quickly adjusted as per the requirements of the facility. If you want to take your business to the next level in a competitive market with indoor navigation app development, you need to know its costs!

But, let’s first start with an indoor navigation app introduction.

What is an Indoor Navigation App?

Like outdoor GPS navigation apps, indoor navigation and positioning systems help users find their desired locations, but inside large commercial buildings where the GPS navigation system doesn’t work. Its IPS-enabled services quickly locate spaces inside hospitals, airports and other locations. This app shows users standing positions on the map and provides the shortest path to reach their destination. 

For excellent performance, an indoor navigation system requires:

• Smartphone with the app installed
• BLE Beacons for guiding users from source and destination
• The app needs a destination facility map
• The app requires back-end servers for indoor destinations.

Here are some popular examples of Indoor Navigation apps are shown in the figure:

Market Statistics for Indoor Navigation Apps

As per the statistics, the worldwide Indoor Navigation market was valued at $6.92 billion. It is estimated to reach $23.6 billion by the year 2023. The United States is the major market for these navigation apps and it accounts for a 40% share in the global market. If you are looking to build a successful navigation app for your business, you are in the right place! But, how can your business benefit from a successful indoor navigation app?

How Does your Business get Benefit from a Successful Indoor Navigation App Development?

As a business owner, you can use indoor navigation app development to add great convenience to users. The main idea behind launching this application is to help visitors and facility owners find locations inside the large building where GPS doesn’t work. 

Suppose you want to create an indoor navigation app like Indoor Positioning System due to its design and functionality. In that case, you need to understand Augmented Reality guides to create detailed indoor maps. Positioning, navigation and sending notifications are major functionality of these navigation systems. Let’s dig deep in details:

#1- Positioning 

If you are looking for any place inside the large building, whether shopping malls, hospitals or campus, positioning functionality helps find it. 

#2- Navigation

Do you want to go somewhere quickly but don’t know the right direction? If so, INS’s navigation functionality will help you find the shortest possible ways to quickly reach your final destination without any hassle. 

#3- Push Notification

Users can get notifications about the locations of places on their mobile, thanks to its push notification functionality. But, how push notification values increase with intensity? Read this post:

Apart from these functionalities, indoor navigation apps offer many benefits to businesses of all sizes, whether small scale or established. Here are the benefits of INS. 

Benefits of Indoor Navigation App Development

#1- Visitor’s Data Collection

User data plays a vital role in every business. That’s where artificial intelligence integrated indoor navigation apps. This system can help businesses gather visitor’s data and keep track of the number of visitors, time spent in a specific place and how often they visit their favorite places. 

#2- Send Notifications

Businesses utilize and analyze the history of visitors to produce trigger-based events and send a notification to those visitors who often visit that specific place. When they visit any specific place or pass through those stores, this app flags up discounts or pops up a notification on visitors’ mobile. 

Still, many businesses are in a dilemma; how do indoor navigation apps work? Let’s understand it in detail:

How do Indoor Navigation Apps Work?

The augmented reality indoor navigation technology leverages internal sensors in your mobiles to calculate the device’s indoor position using the complicated algorithm. It then quickly combines the incoming data from these sensors to calculate a very accurate position, leaving scope for little to no latency, resulting in a smooth user experience. To deliver the accurate positioning result and smooth user experience, the IPS platform depends on three major elements below:

• Underlying dynamic positioning system platform
• Beacons broadcasting signals received from the smartphone 
• Serving signals to the positioning system

All these three elements help in gathering data from several resources and find the user’s exact position. 

The input data comprises:

• Information from smartphone sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope)
• Signals from a transmitter (Wi-Fi access points, beacons)
• Facility maps (information about walls, obstacles, elevators, and staircases is essential)

So this way, an Indoor Navigation System requires:

• A facility (building) map
• A smartphone with a dedicated app
• Fingerprinting and BLE Beacons (it guides a user through the building)
• Back-end servers  indoor navigation calculation is an intensive process

If you are still thinking about making an indoor navigation and positioning app, get in touch with dedicated app developers. They would deliver you an on-demand app development solution that would simplify things for your users and visitors. 

So, indoor positioning app’s smooth functionality requires a unique set of features, as discussed here:

Features to Develop an Indoor Navigation App.

As indoor navigation apps like Mapwize are processing complicated functioning, it requires a detailed unique set of features. However, every business has different needs and requires apps’ different levels to meet their desire; these features are divided into two major segments – Basic and Advanced Features.

Basic Features of an Indoor Navigation System

#1- Positioning

Indoor navigation systems have positioning features that help in locating the user’s exact location in real-time. For that, it uses a different positioning system and mathematical algorithms.  

#2- Mapping

In this INS app, the mapping feature shows the easiest possible routes to the users. This feature also provides the analytics number of present visitors in the largest building at the time. 

#3- Administrative Capabilities: 

If you are a company manager who wants to set up promotional campaigns for your business, the indoor navigation system’s administrative capabilities are the best feature. It maintains beacons for promoting your company’s campaigns. 

#4- Analytics

The integral feature of this application is analytics that provides information on visitors’ numbers inside the large buildings. The multi-storeyed facilities include mall, hotel, hospital or shopping complex. You can hire iOS or android app developers to customize the feature as per your business’s requirements to avoid hassles. 

If you want to earn a strong space in the market, you need to include some additional features to make your app more engaging and interesting. The advanced features of the indoor navigation app are here:

Advanced Features of an Indoor Navigation System

#1- Voice Command

Users can locate the exact destination of a specific place inside the large buildings thanks to voice command. It adds great convenience and comfort to access this application. 

Also, learn about: a guide to voice user-interface design

#2- 3D Map Visualization

For 3D map visualization, it is vital to use augmented reality technology to check the map with 3D effects. 

#3- App Login Using Social Media Accounts

This indoor navigation app makes the sign-in procedure simple and easy for users by logging in to the app using social media accounts or email IDs. 

#4- Custom Design

Indoor navigation apps are customized as per the building’s inside structure. However, for the app’s accurate positioning and functionality, you can hire a dedicated mobile app development company to customize the design as per the building’s interior areas. 

What Technologies Are Used For Indoor Navigation Apps?

The navigation app development needs both software and hardware technologies. An app like indoor navigation or positioning system for android or iOS needs hardware support. For accurate navigation results, these apps require technologies including:

#1- Global Positioning System (GPS)

In navigation app development, GPS (Global Positioning System) technology is used. But, it is fair to mention that this technology fails to provide accurate navigation or positioning inside the largest building. While it works properly in large/low-rise buildings such as airports and hospitals, it fails to find out the finer details like floor number. So, GPS technology is not a viable option for indoors but perfect for outdoor navigation systems. 

#2- Beacon-Based Indoor Navigation

When it comes to indoor navigation app development, Beacon is another popular technology that plays a vital role. For example, use of 2000 battery-powered Bluetooth Low Energy beacons installed at the Gatwick airport, giving great accuracy. But, as per Apple documentation, this technology gives approx. Distance value. Thus, one can’t depend on signal strength as it tries manually calculating this data. If you consider other factors like cost, battery replacement and working range (10-100 meter), it becomes clear that the beacons usage for indoor navigation is only effective under specific conditions. 

Beacons can do excellent work like other trendy indoor positioning technologies such as beacon-based and AR (Augmented Reality)-based used for route visualization. To solve user positioning issues, you need to leverage ARKit & ARCore SDKs’ functionalities. 

#3- Visual Markers

Also known as AR Markers or ARReferenceImage, Visual Marker technology is recognized by Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore and AR SDKs. This technology is used for guiding the app where the augmented reality content is best placed. So, when a marker is placed at some space, such as onto the wall or floor, the exact location is stored in the cloud while scanning. Then the app not only shows just place but its exact matches in the real world as well. 

The visual marker can also be used to find an accurate position with ARCore up to several millimeters. In terms of the accuracy levels, everyone wants to know how accurate results these apps delivered. Well, it can be said that this technology delivers inaccurate results from its starting point. You can place new visual markers on average every 50 meters to deal with this accuracy issue. 

Many companies hire mobile app developers and leave everything on them. But the fact is that hiring a developer is not the only thing that one must keep in mind, you also need the cost of app development. 

Let’s understand the cost of indoor navigation and positioning app development in detail. 

Cost of Indoor Navigation App Development

The cost of indoor navigation app development for android or iOS platforms depends on added features. In a nutshell, the average cost to build an indoor navigation app with basic features can be starting from $10,000 to $50,000. However, the development cost of this app with advanced features might go beyond approximately $25,000 to $55,000. 

It is the estimated development cost of indoor navigation applications. The exact cost also depends on resources and time boundaries to complete the projects. It is affected by several factors, including the app complexity, functionality, technology and so on. 

The Factors Affect the Development Cost of the Indoor Navigation Apps

As you know, the development cost of any application depends on different factors such as functionality, features, app design, app platforms and the developers you choose to hire for android or iOS app development. As every project has different needs and skills, there is no online calculator to determine the exact cost of indoor navigation and positioning. 

Let’s get into the details and understand each factor’s contribution to the app development cost. 

#1 – App Platform

The platform on which you want to launch your app is the main factor determining the cost of app development. If you are a startup with a short budget, going with one platform – whether Android or iOS native apps – is a better option. After getting success with one platform, it is good to move to another platform. For an established business, you can select cross-platform to target android and iSO with a single application. In brief, these navigation applications on android cost higher than iOS as it needs to support many devices.

#2 – UI/UX Design

Make sure your application is attractive and well-designed with all essential features to attract users towards the app. Hiring a dedicated app development company for UI/UX design may cost you a bit more. But, with the best design practices, you can entice a large number of customers. 

#3- App Size & Complexity

The cost to hire a dedicated app development company depends upon what functionalities and level of complexity you need for your application. If you want to develop an indoor navigation application like Google Indoor Maps, hire professionals who can customize the app with the latest features and attract new users.

#4- App Development Team

The development cost of an app like an indoor navigation system depends on the developer’s location, experience and skill level. If you choose to hire a company for iOS app development, you need these experts in your team for your project: 

• Project Manager
• UX/UI Designer
• Android App Developer
• iOS App developer 
• Back-end Developer
• Quality Assurance Engineers

Hopefully, you now have a great idea about the cost of an indoor navigation app development project. So, if you are planning to develop an indoor positioning and navigation application for your largest facilities – whether shopping malls or hospitals, get in touch with an experienced mobile app development company – Appventurez!

How can Appventurez Help in Indoor Navigation App Development?

Developing an indoor navigation app won’t be a challenging task for expert developers. Here, at Appventurez, we keep the process agile and flexible in delivering a unique and enticing indoor navigation app. We have app developers for every domain or niche with all requirements fulfilled with advanced technologies. Our experts can help your business with the most advanced technologies required for indoor navigation applications. 

For further queries regarding the development cost of indoor navigation apps, contact us today! We would love to serve you!