Popular music identification service Shazam has partnered with Bluetooth beacon manufacturer Gimbal to add beacon functionality to the Shazam app – which is currently used by 100m active monthly users and 500m total downloads.
The Gimbal SDK will be integrated into the Shazam app, enabling developers and brands to push content and information to Shazam users. Gimbal has also just announced a partnership with Koupon Media, a cloud-based mobile advertising firm, to use beacons to push marketing offers to nearby shoppers.
Gimbal was formerly part of Qualcomm, who spun the technology off into its own company in May 2014. The company sells two types of beacon; the brand new and larger Series 21, designed as a fixed beacon and centered around a Texas Instruments CC2541 SoC; and the much smaller Series 10, for mobile installations.
Beacons will be valuable for smartphones as they provide a way to send concrete locational data to a phone that is not so readily available via cellular and GPS – which often suffer indoors. A beacon installed in a specific place is able to feed precise data to a smartphone, which is then better able to provide contextually relevant information to its user. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices can operate in an advertisement mode, in which they broadcast themselves and their information to nearby devices.
Bluetooth Smart, the new and less-insightful branding for BLE, has been standard on most smartphones since 2011. The first Apple device to support Bluetooth 4.0 was the iPhone 4S, and Apple unveiled its iBeacon technology in mid-2013. iBeacons supports both Android and iOS, as long as the app developers use the iBeacon API.
By the end of the year, Apple had activated beacons in 254 of its US retail stores, which were used to push offers and customer reviews to compatible handsets that had downloaded the Apple Store app.
This app, once installed, would display the push notifications from the iBeacons on the users lock screen, where they could be acted upon. Unwanted ones could be dismissed, but if the beacon in the headphone section detected a user, it would be able to push information regarding the latest offers to the phone, as well as reviews and product info.
What’s more, the app also enables the user to pay for a purchase via the associated Apple account on the iTunes software. After issuing a digital receipt, the customer would then be able to leave the store with their purchase – without requiring a member of staff’s interaction. This frees up existing staff or reduces the number needed to manage a store, and iBeacons also have the potential to draw in passing trade from the high-street.
We spoke to Kevin Hunter, Gimbal’s COO, who told RIoT that the update to the Shazam app was due soon, as well as telling us about the beacon market in general. The Shazam news is the largest such deal in the beacons market to date, and uptake from stadiums and events has been the strongest driving force for Gimbal so far.
Hunter noted that stadiums were so receptive to the technology because it increased the ability to bring crowds to the venue, and then presented opportunities to sell things to them once they were there. Whether it’s merchandise or concessions, a stadium-wide app that can provide news, information and direction to the nearest bar is an asset that stadiums have capitalized on.
We also learned that the retail sector had been less receptive; largely experimenting with strategies in 2014. A notable exception was GameStop, which has 5500 stores in the US, as well as the aforementioned Apple retail stores. Experiments with out-of-home advertising installations are also in the works, and Hunter said that he expected stadiums and events to make up a much smaller percentage of the market as other demographics increase their uptake.
Gimbal is also developing a new USB-based beacon that will find a home in points of sale (PoS) terminals, cars and other retrofit locations – where a computer and power supply are available to the device. The company is also licensing its firmware out to other businesses, with once implementation adding beacon functionality to lightbulbs.
Hunter also explained that Gimbal’s beacons will use additional packets to cater for Android devices. In addition, Gimbal’s Digital Ownership platform, a cloud-based management system, allows the owner of installed beacons to manage them remotely and prevent others from hijacking the publicly-available UUID number to send out unwanted and malicious links – something that could cripple a business’ reputation.
And in discussing reputation, Hunter admitted that uptake of beacon usage among the general population is a complex matter of permissions, opt-in programs and OS integration. If a user downloads an app like Shazam and opts in to receive beacon alerts, that’s one thing. But if there is an integrated toggle-switch in the settings of iOS or Android; one unwanted beacon alert could see a user opt-out of the ecosystem entirely, potentially never to return. User control must be retained, and privacy settings should be robust and granular – and currently a standalone app is the safer option for not alienating a user base.
Managing the balance will be tricky, but if the retail sector realizes the potential for the devices to claw back the footfall that has been lost to online shopping, beacon shipments could skyrocket. And on the topic of shipments, Hunter said he couldn’t go into detail, but confirmed that “lots” had been manufactured.
Shazam’s CEO, Rich Riley added “we are excited to add beacons as a way that we connect our users with the world around them. Gimbal is an ideal partner to provide an unprecedented, customizable mobile experience, and a new and meaningful way to connect brands and customers.”
Other beacons in the news:
Elsewhere in the beacon-sphere, Blesh has launched the first beacons to make use of Google’s Physical Web and are available to developers today. Physical Web is an attempt to define how users interact with objects in the IoT, by pushing locally specific information to a smartphone without requiring a dedicated app – like Shazam above.
Scott Jensen, Google’s UX designer, said “our core premise is that you should be able to walk up to any ‘smart’ physical object (a vending machine, a poster, a bus stop, a rental car, for example), and interact with it without downloading an app. The user experience should be much like links in a web browser, i.e. just tap and use.”
In this case, the Blesh PW beacons broadcast a URL that the phone uses to convey data to its owner. Currently, Blesh requires a dedicated app, but that should change as work on Physical Web progresses. Blesh is currently selling the developer kit for $50. It contains three PW beacons, and the app is free to download for both iOS and Android.
The Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity has a far greater range that QR codes or NFC, which require action from the user – either scanning or tapping their phone to an object. BLE offers to automate this process, so that the hypothetical user can receive timetable updates on their device as they wait at a bus stop. The longer range is also beneficial if the beacons are set up to guide a user through a location, such as a museum, stadium or airport – just like Radius Networks did at CES this year, via the CES app, using its iBeacons and AltBeacons – an open source beacon protocol that Radius has begun developing.
Also at CES, Bluvision launched its iBEEK BLE iBeacons, which can be backhauled and updated via Bluvision’s BluFi gateways. The BluFi bridges link the beacons to a WiFi connection, which allows them to be updated and sent push notifications via the internet.
The iBEEK uses Texas Instrument’s SimpleLink microcontroller units and BLE-Stack software for the TI CC2540 and CC2541 SoCs. Additionally, the iBEEK integrates temperature, light and motion sensors to give additional insight into their deployment environment. Bluvision also has a CMS platform called BluZone, which buyers can use to track visitor interactions.
The last bit of post-CES beacon news comes from ShopX and its ShopX retail platform, which has announced that it intends to give out 1 million free beacons to US retailers as part of its strategy to become the global leader in retail workforce management and customer experience – on the back of its monthly subscriptions to the management platform.
The beacons will be Android and iOS compatible, and will allow retailers to deploy ShopX to push relevant information to customers. “Customers can get instant access to in-store assistants and enjoy other online shopping benefits whilst shopping in brick and mortar stores. It’s like Uber for customer service!” says Wayne Kyle, ShopX’s CEO.
While Kyle’s enthusiasm is apparent, all of the players in the beacon space need to convince both consumers and businesses of the benefits of beacons. Kyle notes that “our biggest challenge working with retailers on consumer behavior was not giving them the data they wanted, but rather helping them correct their shortcomings.” But once these companies can prove the value of beacons and other IoT technology in the asset and supply chain, it won’t take long for business to start purchasing and leasing beacons in volume.