The Importance of iBeacons Explained in the Present Context

We spend a good portion of our time glued to the smartphone screen, whether indoor or outdoor. But when we spend time indoor marketers often cannot keep in touch because of poor signal strength over GPS network. On the other hand, iBeacons with a limited circumference of signal works great across premises.

Beacons are basically an inexpensive location technology that quickly rose to prominence because of the limitation of GPS in connecting people in inside area. A Beacon tiny enough to get inside a clench of fist literally offers endless possibilities to the marketers to connect business audience. With the emergence of Beacon, businesses started to utilize location-based technologies more contextually. It is no longer one-size-fits-all type of marketing since Beacons allow communicating more precisely to your audience in a particular time, place, and context. iBeacon, the source of delight for app development company still have some performance issues. But in all regards, it quickly became the most sought after tool to incorporate localization and context in any marketing.

iBeacons in less than two years went on to transform the way retailers connect their prospects and target audience, event organizers create buzz around an event and organize events, enterprises address their audience based on location and educational institutions stay connected with learners within the premise. Apart from the institutions and businesses individuals also found beacons effective for allowing automation in a connected ecosystem of gadgets.

iBeacons in diverse industry-specific usage

Thanks to the new scope of localization offered by iBeacons, industries, and respective businesses leaped to their feet to utilize this technology to grab the audience and drive sales. The retail sector became hugely benefited through a notification sent to in-store customers based on their product browsing and through the contactless payment system.

Beacons allow retailers to know the in-store location and accordingly flash deals can be sent to push them for a purchase from that part of the store. Beacons allow customers making the contactless payment through the signal sent and received via a connected mobile app and the nearby Beacon. From the customer's perspective, it helped to improve the shopping experience. As the vast majority of buyers are smartphone users, Beacons will continue to be an appealing solution for enhancing user experience.

Beacons ad the challenges ahead

Well, Beacons as of now offered immense possibilities to transform our retail, consumer, learning and digital experience at home. But in spite of the huge promise and robust potential of the technology Beacons proved to have several barriers to its widespread adoption in business, public premises, and individual homes.

A series of permissions required by the connected apps for allowing access to the Beacons is a major obstacle to the smooth adoption of the technology. Typically, Bluetooth needs to be turned on followed by acceptance of location service by the connected app and the user needs to choose the option of receiving notification from the respective store or business.

While Beacons have brought transformation to the retail sector and offering huge scopes for retailers to adopt to this new scope of connecting customers, other industries and services like the aviation, transport systems, educational institutions, and workplaces still remained largely untouched by this new technology except for vague planning and long-drawn propositions.

Concern over signal strength and obstruction

If the multiple layers of permission prove to be a challenge iBeacon deployment, the constraint of signals between the receiver Beacons and the external radios can be regarded as another major obstacle. Basically, iBeacon apps remain in communication with external radios to send signals and this often make the communication suffer from poor signal strength.

The handheld device in customers hand needs to guess the location of the Beacon and send signals. The radio waves in a particular place fluctuate because of the physical obstruction caused by people. Moreover, Beacon uses Bluetooth LE wavelength which utilizes the same spectrum used by Wi-Fi. As a result, both signals sharing the same spectrum can easily collide and interfere.

Lastly, we must remember that the Beacons are still made by several third-party manufacturers with the qualitative difference in the power and signal potential of their beacon devices. While poor signal strength is a big constraint for Beacons being used in many premises, absence of a uniform manufacturing standard remains to be a big concern. Further to add to the volatility of the signal strength, temperature also plays a crucial role in affecting signal strength. The varying degree of precision and accuracy in signal is the biggest challenge for the adoption of Beacons in general.