Tis’ the season for Beaconing and Shopping!

Holiday shopping dollars are down this year, but technology companies are scrambling to push new in-store digital initiatives.  Most are in the form of low energy Bluetooth transmitters, to check you into a store and present offers.  As the forerunner of this category, we are happy to see our peers attempts into these initiatives.  Here is a rundown on the headlines for this burgeoning beaconing industry leading into the retail season from the summer of 2013…

July 10^th, NewAer publicly debuts Kiosk at the MobileBeat Innovation Showdown.

This app is built upon our “peer to peer” proximity SDK to let a phone or wearable “health and fitness” BTLE device trigger an iPad running our custom software.  When a guest approaches, it displays custom messages for them in a store or museum.  A story and interview shot on the 10^th of July was published to the web later, after editing.

Our fan favorite app - reminds where you parked your car!

September 9^th, PayPal aims to re-invent the in-store shopping experience with their Beacon product, which gives their users in a store a personalized experience to those who have the PayPal application.

September 26^th, Apple announces that Major League Baseball will use their iBeacon service to trigger the MLB app and give fans information throughout ballparks that leverage the technology.

November 5^th, NewAer receives its first granted patent #8,577,354 to automate actions on a phone network based upon scanned wireless signals.  This is our SDK engine to scan any wireless signal, then trigger an automated action in your handheld device, or make a change within the cloud.

November 7^th, Qualcomm invites us to speak on an LTE-Direct panel with other industry leaders about our machine to machine discovery efforts with WiFi and Bluetooth, and how LTE-D will be yet another radio for our Proximity Platform to leverage.

November 20^th, Shopkick announces that Macy’sstores in San Francisco and New York are the first to deploy iBeacon.  We tested it in NY on multiple devices and no beacons were found on iOS 7 nor with our Proximity SDK which “sees” said beacons.

December 6^th, Apple announces 254 stores will use their trademarked iBeacons to notify users via the Apple Store application when things are nearby with their iPhones (we tested this on an iPad to no avail) running iOS 7 with push and location services turned on.

December 9^th, Qualcomm wraps up the press releases with their announcement of making their Gimbal sensors or short-range tracking “proximity beacons” commercially available as part of their context aware platform, which lets retailers know when a customer has entered a store.  They have iOS support today, with plans for Android support in the future (see below on their disregard to the Android OS Bluetooth stack)

With all of the tech press talking beacons, what’s our take on it?

Our NewAer Proximity Platform SDK is the only software only, all device (Windows, iOS, Android and OS-X) plug-in with the ability to automate actions from all radios (WiFi, Bluetooth, BTLE, NFC, Cellular and Bonjour on-LAN) that a device can receive as an application plug-in on the market today.  With our extremely low-power software based scanning engine in development since 2010, two patents allowed, and another handful pending, we have the most robust set of capabilities in the space.  To see it work for yourself, you can download our Share App on any mobile device, or read the JavaDocs of our SDK.

With our Proximity Platform SDK, you do not need to install new hardware as the world is flooded with WiFi access points, and commoditized BTLE beacons like Stick-n-Find or FitBit activity monitors can trigger events without deployment of devices within an occupied space.  This means that anything emitting a signal can be received to automate actions within a users device or the cloud.

PayPal’s Beacon launched as a USB thumb drive sized device using a BTLE chip to allow a customer to “check into” a store – as long as the user has the PayPal application and the store is in their database.  Offers are managed through the PayPal system where they can also handle payment, as PayPal is a money-sending engine after all.  If you are a small retail store, especially without a credit card processor, this may be the best “self serve” solution for you, as they provide the user application, a daunting and perhaps unnecessary task for a small merchant.

Shopkick uses a similar beacon and business model, where the retail user manages their offers within the Shopkick database requiring the customer to have their Shopkick app installed.  This is much like the lesser used and we presume end-of-life Shopkick audio transmitters that the company debuted as an indoor “localized” trigger.

Apple iBeacon, uses their iOS core location service, which acts as a front-end filter for the Bluetooth communication stack and does not pass the BTLE device data into an app like a traditional BTLE device.  That means if you do not have an associated app for a beaconing location on the iPhone, then nothing will be triggered on it.  Once the right app is installed, location services, background operation and push notifications must also be enabled, and in most cases you must have mobile connectivity to the smartphone to engage the application.

This technology has promise due to the volume iOS devices used in the developed world, as the only fees are that of the proprietary iBeacon.  The downfall is typical of Apple’s “walled garden" approach and limitations, along with a lack of Android support.  Since WiFi is not supported, these new BTLE devices must be placed within a store, existing wireless infrastructure cannot be used.

Qualcomm LTE Direct, presumably coming in the future, will enable discovery of devices over traditional cellular frequencies, even if Bluetooth and WiFi is turned off.  This technology has great potential for public value, as long as the carriers support cross-network communication.  Meaning, if a Verizon phone can only see another Verizon phone, then the proximity value ends.  Carriers need to keep this communication channel open for mass adoption and value to occur.  Qualcomm will want to sit in the middle of these transactions to receive compensation however, which could be further downfall to its launch expected in 2015.

Qualcomm Gimbal, like LTE-D their Fyx beacon talks to their iOS SDK in another walled garden that goes so far as to crash the Android stack via its “security by obscurity” implementation.  We will have another post on how to easily “crack” this, pending it continues to ship.  Core to the Fxy problem with Android is that it rotates through a new MAC address every half-second, which floods the Android Bluetooth Share background process with too many entries.  This can only be solved by a VERY long cache timeout, restoring the operating system or upgrading the OS.  Qualcomm knows of this issue, but we recommend removing the battery from a Fyx beacon if you have one to prevent this MAC spamming.

So there you have it – the press releases from companies in this new industry, and a brief on what those players are up to.

As a wrap-up; NewAer is the first in the industry with the ability to scan any radio wave, including WiFi and some devices Cellular, and Bluetooth 2.0 plus beaconing Bonjour devices if a user is on a network.  This gives our framework the ability to provide customer solutions using infrastructure that exists in most any location today – without requiring new technology roll-outs.

For developers, our NewArea API ads the element of the very first cross-platform solution to infer proximity between devices that normally would not be able to see each other.  This means iOS and the rest of the ecosystem including Android devices, and even Windows based computers driving displays within a public space can share proximity data.  Another first in the industry.

We are proud of what we have created, and cannot wait to hear how you would like to use it within your own company applications.  Download our SDK here!