Venture Beat has a great article by Kyle Fugere of dunnhumby Ventures on “Why indoor location tech is facing an uphill battle” where he says most beacon/platform providers have focussed on retail and consequently the:
“Refined focus has considerably shrunk the market opportunity for these companies”
He encourages companies to be
“more creative in regards to use cases”
and think about
“Banking, transportation, and live events with a potentially greater need and significantly shorter sales cycle”
We agree. Too many solutions tie beacons with a marketing platform. Also, one beacon type doesn’t fit all scenarios. One marketing platform certainly can’t fit all usecases. For example, a marketing platform isn’t suitable for security and sensing (IoT) applications.
The preponderance of beacon-based marketing platforms has obscured and confused what beacons actually are, due to over emphasis of the retail business benefits or description of proprietary server side CMS features. Many clients coming to us are actually confused.
The excessive competition in retail has caused beacon companies to have to run very lean. There’s noone to really talk to and even if you do get to talk to someone they only know about the benefits but can’t provide technical advice on how to solve your requirements.
Good business is all about listening to customers and adapting solutions. Most current platform providers can’t do that as most have trapped themselves with sparse human resources, narrow technical systems and very restricted ranges of beacon hardware.
Our site provides articles and a wide range of beacons to allow you to take advantage of beacons in scenarios outside traditional retail marketing and into new areas such as banking, security, transportation, distribution, sensing and the Internet of Things.