A method for identifying a motion status of a mobile terminal, and a mobile terminal are provided. The method includes collecting information about multiple wireless local area network (WLAN) access points during each time of scanning, where the information includes a basic service set identifier and signal strength; calculating a belief value and a list orthogonality value according to the information about the multiple WLAN access points; and presetting a belief decision threshold and a list orthogonality decision threshold, and comparing the decision thresholds with calculated values to acquire the motion status of the mobile terminal. Therefore, the motion status of the mobile terminal may be acquired without making a change in any hardware on an existing mobile terminal. In addition, the present disclosure is applicable to an area covered by multiple wireless local area network access points.