MobileBeat: Micello pushes forward with indoor maps

Micello is one of 20 promising startups included in the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition, and is in the running for one of two coveted Tesla Awards.

We’ve been covering the indoor map company Micello for months now — first with its iPhone app launch at DEMOfall 09, and then with its Valentine’s Day promotion. The company will be presenting at the MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco this week, and it looks like it has made some progress over the past few months.

Micello describes itself as “Google Maps inside a building.” The company has developed a simple method of mapping indoor locations like malls and universities. Thus far, it has mapped over 1,000 locations, and it’s adding 350 more over the next month. Even though indoor map making is a nascent field, Micello has the advantage of being one of the first companies to focus on it.

Since we last covered the company, SingTel, a mobile carrier based in Singapore, has come on as Micello’s first major customer. Its mobile apps using Micello’s maps were released in June, and Micello says that other major companies and retailers are also looking into using its data.

Micello sees established map providers like Google Maps and Navteq as potential competitors in the indoor map industry. The company figures that eventually one of those companies will attempt their own indoor map project, and the other may look towards Micello to license its maps. There are also other companies looking directly at indoor maps, like Point Inside.

Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Micello reportedly received an undisclosed amount of seed funding last year.