Digital Lifescapes

Retailers are investing more on in-store digital technology that has the potential to improve the shopping experience. The ABI Research quarterly indoor location database has forecast well over one million indoor location retail deployments by 2020, with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons now established as the key building block for indoor location. "What is really interesting is how rapidly beacons are spreading into all 11 retail or venue verticals covered in the database, in particular quick service restaurants (CAGR 84.4 percent) and convenience stores (CAGR 47.1 percent) are two of the fastest growing verticals over the forecast period" said Patrick Connolly, principal analyst at ABI Research . ABI has forecast some major chain-wide technology deployments over the next 12 months, and there will also be significant new growth in key retail verticals -- such as Grocery, Big Box, and Malls. Total BLE beacon shipments are now expected to approach 200 million by 2020 a...

While the broad concept of the Internet of Things may be difficult for people to grasp, one basic concept is already familiar within the mainstream population -- that being the practical benefits of GPS and location-aware technologies. Healthcare, enterprise, mobile wearables and indoor beacon applications will help to revive the global positioning system (GPS) tracking device market, with ABI Research forecasting the market to reach over $3.5 billion in 2019. The GPS personal tracking market has always had huge potential yet it has faced significant barriers around awareness, expensive devices, cellular subscriptions, indoor location and market fragmentation. As a result, market development has never been able to scale sufficiently to lower costs and create the revenue to support much needed marketing and advertising campaigns. But that's about to change. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, the upside will now be driven by the adoption of GPS applications...