Where are beacons moving?

USA: You must have heard of these guys taking over RFID in many industries already, or at least claiming they will soon do so.

BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon technology is coming up as a promising way to determine not only location but context for an app-holder. Like in retail, you can know about the section of a grocery store you're in and accordingly shape the shopping list. Or you can have specific images or info pulled out for you when you are in a specific spot at a museum tour.

This is slightly advanced than GPS as it breaks the constraints of having satellite signals and it is also different than cellular tower triangulation in terms of accuracy of location identification.

This is also a technology that is taking a leap over RFID as it does not need scanners or reading capabilities when you take a quick comparison, as some industry watchers have been noting. Beacons work by using BLE and hence no need for a special reader, while they immediately pop location coordinates in a self-identifying fashion, thus leaving it to the device owner or app to decide what to do next with the information.

It is becoming specially potent for retailers for they can track shoppers, stitch tailored sales pitches or incentives at specific locations. More and more verticals can tap their power for better insights, customer engagement, sales, and service enablement.

The latest edition of ABI Research’s report,'Indoor Location in Retail: Where is the Money?' also tots indoor location revenues to reach $10 billion in 2020, and this would be driven primarily by BLE Beacons and advertising.

As Principal Analyst Patrick Connolly diagnoses, “The $10 billion revenue number is broken down into its constituent parts, with initial revenue primarily derived from infrastructure, recurring fees, and analytics. This provides the backbone for advertising revenue over the second half of the forecast period; in particular ABI Research has forecast very strong revenue growth for in-store / local search and coupon / offer advertising. This opportunity is reflected in the spate of proximity advertising networks that are springing up in 2015 across the globe, with Twitter recently investing in Swirl.”

“From a technology perspective, BLE Beacons are now the anchor technology for the vast majority of deployments worldwide. But we have already seen hybrid deployments that include ultrasound and Wi-Fi, with small cell / LTE expected to feature more strongly as these networks are rolled out. BLE Beacons are not always the answer, and companies need to embrace hybrid.” he further analyses.

“Looking at the competitive environment, there are a host of new companies to watch in 2015 that are going to make the jump to chain wide deployments—expect to see some huge announcements over the coming 12 months. Major players like Facebook, Groupon, and Google will also join the fray, which would have a real multiplier effect on adoption, particularly in SMEs. More traditional players like Wi-Fi access point vendors and people counting OEMs have aggressively moved into new indoor technologies. Finally SK Telecom has shown how carriers can play a major role in this space and we have forecast others to follow.” he augurs.

The technology is still in need of protocols, third-party standards, API foundational work, as some experts suggest. A good Bluetooth mesh network, so that beacons can communicate with each other via Bluetooth and avert one-by-one connections, would be another good add-on to this new beacon of new-location-leverage-ideas.