Apple's iBeacon is a technology that enables a new wave of relevant, contextual information services through your smartphone. But with the associated benefits easily available to all, there is a risk of poor implementation hampering the widespread adoption of such a significant technology.
Apple released iBeacon as part of its iOS 7 launch. Using Bluetooth Low Energy, it allows mobile devices to understand their location more precisely than anything else widely available to consumers. Think of iBeacon, and the micro-location that it enables, as a more precise, indoor GPS system: iBeacons are constantly broadcasting "where" they are, and when your smartphone picks up this information it becomes aware of the very specific location it is in, unlocking a wealth of potential we have only just begun to see in mobile computing.
This small yet significant extra layer of intelligence allows businesses to offer customers a new wave of contextually relevant experiences, simplifying the user's journey through knowledge of their precise location and context. At a very basic level, iBeacon allows businesses to deliver messaging about products around the user at that moment, while they are physically near the products. As a customer walks into a shop iBeacon can trigger an app on their iPhone to display a special offer for a particular item in that store. But while micro-location enables far more meaningful and powerful experiences, it is precisely this "quick win" that could have a negative long-term impact on the adoption of iBeacon.
There's a very real danger of businesses clamouring to deliver cheap, quick experiences using iBeacon technology without putting much thought behind them. This is ultimately likely to deliver poor user experiences, putting off consumers from activating the technology on their devices and creating a knock-on effect for other, more considerate, businesses. Poor experiences delivered by the minority could lead to a negative user-reaction that impacts on the majority.
The contextual computing revolution is on our doorstep: the Internet of Things and "invisible clicks" (predetermined machine-to-machine communication triggering an action that consumers themselves would "click" on), personal mobile computers in every pocket, and micro-location technologies, such as Apple's iBeacon, allow for wonderful, meaningful, relevant experiences to be delivered to us. An inexpensive iBeacon stuck on an elderly person's fridge door can send passive, reassuring messages to, say, a faraway son that his parent is up and active for the day. These technologies can enable retailers to recognise specific customers entering their store and ensure their pre-ordered items are ready and waiting for them for a real, personalised shopping experience. They can allow tradesmen in the field to locate a problem and then instantly give them the exact information needed to repair it.
The ease of implementing iBeacon-triggered experiences however, means that anyone with an app can deliver a potentially intrusive, irrelevant message to your phone's home screen. This is annoying when it happens once or twice, but walking down a high street and receiving a dozen or so unwanted messages will soon lead consumers to switch off the function in apps, or even on the smartphone itself. Perhaps one of the worst case scenarios is that what should be a marvellous technology instead devolves into the next medium for spam. Businesses delivering a new wave of marketing spam could potentially lead to a mass switching-off of Bluetooth on iPhones. The iBeacon signals could also technically be hijacked by competitors or hackers to use iBeacon's information to deliver their own content within their own app. Some of the more paranoid among us could also validly raise concerns that iBeacon is a way to track our real-world movements.
iBeacon, and the contextually relevant experience that it enables, is a significant step towards the next level of personal computing, something we are just starting to scratch the surface of. The benefits and opportunities this type of technology affords is something that will become obvious soon enough. To benefit fully from this innovation, businesses must deliver considered, unintrusive, secure experiences that show consumers the clear benefits of enabling this technology, for it to become trusted and widespread. The warnings of poorly implemented technology effecting consumer trust has been demonstrated with Samsung's latest device, the Galaxy S5, fingerprint scanner, being easily hacked and used to carry out PayPal payments, creating a wariness of using mobile money.
Only time will tell if and how iBeacon will be adopted by businesses and consumers but, much as with any service or experience, it needs careful thought and consideration before it's deployed. Otherwise the consequences could be that iBeacon heads the initial way of the QR code in Western Europe – a cost-effective technology, poorly implemented, which delivered little or no use to consumers in a poor user experience. In Asia, QR codes are a phenomenal success, simply because they've been implemented effectively, but in Western Europe it will take a long time for the QR code to make a recovery and by then it could be too late. It's down to those creating the experiences to make sure iBeacon doesn't go down that same path.
Joel Blackmore is head of innovation at Somo.
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