Qualcomm is making a big play in the fashionable area of Bluetooth beacons, which have most commonly been used to support micro-location services in retail stores. Last week it announced it had spun off its Gimbal beacon technology into a separate company and secured investment to expand it. This week it adds that it it pushing beacons as part of future 3GPP standards for indoor location. The chip giant is working with the US Department of Commerce and other interested parties on a proposed 3GPP study, which will explore how beacons might improve the accuracy of indoor location tracking. This remains a weakness for many cellular systems, partly because of poor GPS performance inside buildings. Remedies include small cells, or…