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  • Mobile World Congress Sees Rise in Indoor Location Companies

    Kevin Dennehy
    Kevin Dennehy

    This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was the biggest ever, with 95,000 attendees and thousands of booths, conferences and people with sore feet walking a cavernous exhibition hall. While the Geneva Auto Show ran close to the same dates, connected vehicle companies and technology were prominently featured. What was interesting, however, was the rise of indoor positioning companies and mobile advertising agencies with interest in location.

    BARCELONA — Joining the 95,000 or so Mobile World Congress attendees were about three dozen companies who are offering indoor location and location advertising services. These companies have exhibited at previous conferences, but not in the numbers this year.

    At the huge Fira convention center where MWC was held March 2-5, Los Altos, Calif.-based Pole Star installed more than 600 beacons for indoor location. Visitors were able to be guided to booths and other areas through an interactive map. “Business was good in 2014, we sold 10,000 beacons. We are making money,” said Christian Carle, Pole Star CEO.

    One analyst said that the big change at MWC wasn’t the number of indoor positioning companies and demos, but the maturity and breadth of the technology. “Intel announced indoor positioning capabilities in their Wi-Fi chip, and had a demo that was very impressive. Many smaller companies that in past years were showing raw technology were showing polished solutions this year, such as Quuppa, MTI and Sensewhere, said Bruce Krulwich, Grizzly Analytics president, who has authored a report identifying 150 indoor positioning companies. “I definitely see a shake-out coming up, but it won’t be one technology prevailing over another. Different technologies meet different needs in the industry, and different technologies fit different sites. There are technologies that deliver universal indoor positioning, without any infrastructure or preparation, such as Wi-Fi multilateration and sensor fusion.”

    Krulwich said that there is a shake-out that’s already started because there are too many companies working on similar technologies. “Start-ups in the area that don’t have differentiating innovation, don’t have integration into retail or other back-end systems, and don’t have market penetration, are already finding themselves in a challenge. But companies with clear innovations and commercial deployments will do fine,” he said.

    United Kingdom-based Sensewhere is using crowdsourcing in its indoor positioning software. The software uses radios to scan for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to allow an IP location to reference the sources and form a location database.

    “It’s what we call the universal indoor positioning versus venue specific indoor positioning, which can work anywhere — we just need a crowd of people. Our target partners are handset manufacturers, network operators, social media, social network providers, and also chipset guys as well,” said Rob Palfreyman, Sensewhere CEO. “So, there are obviously a lot of companies like Google looking at venues; there is Micello and TomTom looking at add-ins in the indoor location, which is great news, but it just needs to have a technology that can drive the blue dot on their map, and we feel that Sensewhere is the right place to provide that blue dot because of the crowdsourcing global nature of our approach.”

    One company, which has developed a popular mobile game, is using its network to attract advertisers for its location-based ad platform. “We already have the infrastructure in place because of our mobile game. With our platform, we can allow advertisers to launch campaigns using our beacon signals and geofencing,” said Pedro Jahara, CEO of Brazil-based RevMob.

    New location technology like the ability to track SIM cards was rolled out at MWC. W-Locate, which is partnering with Morpho in Thailand, is tracking SIM cards with its XimLoc product, which the company said is more accurate indoors than other technology.

    Even such companies as Geotab, which is a strong player in the fleet market, are leveraging MWC to continue a foothold in the European market. The company displayed its IOX-CAN system that can send data from a mobile device to the MyGeotab system, which can be viewed an analyzed by fleet managers, said Maria Sotra, Geotab marketing manager.

    Geotab also partnered with Telefonica in November 2014 to focus efforts in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, Sotra said.

    At MWC, location-based advertising market is gaining traction as advertisers are seeing the benefit of locating and attracting customers. New York-based xAd said it has doubled its revenue for the second year. “We have billions of mobile ads processed and billions of ad impressions. The company is profitable,” said Dipanshu Sharma, xAd founder and CEO.

    He said the company has expanded into France and Germany and added China to its global ad network.

    Another company that is using location technology as a differentiator is Airpush, which had another big presence at MWC. The company’s Abstract Banners was a big draw to attendees. Location, particularly geofenced areas, have created a call to action for consumers, which is attractive to advertisers, said Cameron Peeples, Airpush vice president of marketing.

    Connected Car Still Big Opportunity at MWC

    Although the Geneva Auto Show was starting as the MWC was ending, there were still several big announcements by connected car companies in Barcelona. Even the well-publicized Samsung S6 and S6 Edge and HTC One M9 handset rollouts included Mirrorlink, the connected vehicle standard from the Connected Car Consortium.

    In another big announcement, Audi and AT&T said that all 2016 model vehicles equipped with Audi connect will come with the carrier’s 4G LTE or 3G coverage. This increase in services is big because the auto giant just rolled out 4G AT&T service in Audi A3s last year.

    AT&T selected Airbiquity to provide end-user registration and device management connected vehicle services for select customer programs. “Airbiquity will deliver these services to AT&T using our Choreo cloud-based connected vehicle services delivery platform and project management, engineering, and operations teams,” said David Jumpa, Airbiquity chief revenue officer. “This is a ‘white label’ agreement whereby AT&T will integrate Airbiquity’s service delivery capability into AT&T’s connected vehicle customer solutions.”

    Another location company is making huge inroads in connected vehicle markets with its Glympse for Autos product. Glympse will be installed in select Volkswagen and Peugeot models through MirrorLink, said Bryan Trussel, company co-founder and CEO.

    The app allows users to share location from their vehicle by setting the recipient and timer, and hitting send. The company has a similar app for Gogo inflight aviation networks to allow a person on the ground to know where an airplane is for picking up passengers.

    In other connected car news, Accenture is providing Fiat Chrysler Automobiles the capability of in-car, Internet-based services. Starting with the new Fiat 500X, Uconnect Live services, which was co-developed by Accenture, will power an infotainment system that offers music and news services, social network access, the ability to monitor driving style and a range of diagnostic services.

    Accenture also partnered with Visa for an IoT-based connected car commerce test. At MWC, the company tested a scenario where drivers could order food from the car using cellular, Bluetooth and beacon connectivity. Accenture deployed a similar system with BMW’s ConnectedDrive, which allows customers to choose services in real time for a vehicle.

    Health Market Even Has Location Potential

    Niche location applications are growing as Internet of Things, or IoT, markets start to grow. One company taking advantage of the mobile market is Annapolis, Md.-based TCS, which featured its VirtuMedix platform in its MWC booth.

    The platform is tailored to emergency physicians as part of the growing market for video telemedicine products and mobile health, said Jay Whitehurst, TCS commercial software group president. “It’s already saving lives,” he said of the platform, which combines encryption, navigation, mapping and messaging.

    While the product, now being rolled out in a North Carolina emergency medicine group, provides patients with an alternative to urgent care centers and emergency rooms, it also can be used for longer term cases such as assisted living and rehab centers, the company said.

    Whitehurst said TCS has made several company acquisitions that have played a part in new product rollouts, which include the company’s Trusted Location. The application allows financial firms, online gaming companies and others to identify and prevent credit-card fraud. The application identifies and validates a device’s location worldwide.

    In other Mobile World Congress news:

    • Spirent said its simulators have the capability to evaluate Wi-Fi Offload and Wi-Fi performance of mobile devices on its test framework. The new product allows companies to test multiple devices on a single unit to cover Wi-Fi/LTE mobility and interoperability. The testing is important in light of wireless carriers’ strategy to extend VoLTE in areas where cell coverage is limited, said Saul Einbinder, Spirent vice president, venture development.
    • Google Waze said its Google Mobile Service (GMS) will be available as a preinstall option on mobile devices. OEMs and carriers can preinstall the app on their handsets so consumers can use the service immediately, the company said.
    • Trimble’s ALK said its ALK Maps and route visualization software is now available in Europe. ALK Maps, launched in the United States in 2012, allows users to overlay routing, geocoding points, weather and other features, the company said.

  • Self-Driving Cars Find Their Way at CES

    This year’s CES featured the usual big TV screens, loudspeakers, wearables, 3D printers, drones and connected vehicles surrounded by 150,000 attendees over several Las Vegas meeting venues. What was interesting was the continued rise of autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles and platforms. Lost in all of the noise was a small, but important, location-based services enclave that consisted of GPS-enabled wearables and indoor positioning.

    LAS VEGAS—A big chunk of the estimated 30 billion worldwide connected devices will be those linked to vehicles, say industry experts at the International Consumer Electronics Show here. Nearly all automakers had a presence at CES — all with a long-term connected vehicle strategy.

    No matter how big and exhausting CES is, with long taxi lines and 150,000 attendees, there is good reason to come a day before the giant conference, as the Consumer Telematics Show and AT&T Developer’s Conference feature many industry executives and new developments. At the Consumer Telematics Show, speakers explained how and why connected vehicles are transitioning to autonomous capability.

    The connected car industry has matured to the point where technology and market points are coming together, said Thilo Koslowski, Gartner vice president and practice leader, automotive vehicle ICT mobility, at CTS. “The opportunity of connected vehicles are becoming the center of mobile and [Internet of Things] innovations. It has come from, in 1997, a pure telematics safety and security device to vehicle integration, digital lifestyle convergence and Internet of cars,” he said. “At the end of the year, there will be 25 million connected vehicles in the world, but most in mature markets. That might not look like a lot, but only in five more years, I think that number is going to 150 million vehicles.”

    In some cases, the newer outfitted vehicles will have only safety and security features, Koslowski said, but most will have two-way data communication, part of the 30 billion devices connected by 2020. He predicted last year that most automakers would have shifted general mobile applications to vehicle and customer-specific services.

    Koslowski says the top connected car features that consumers have asked for include automated map updates, real-time weather and news, parking spot finder and driving assessment and coaching. “Consumers don’t want application downloads directly into the car. In addition, in-vehicle media purchases are not there yet, as are in-vehicle social networking updates,” he said. “I predicted in 2013 that 25 percent of the automakers would monetize mobile commerce transactions in their connected vehicle offerings such as parking, buying gas, etc.,” he said.

    Self-Aware Vehicle Emergence

    Imagine sleeping, or reading, in your car during the morning commute. It may be a reality, but major technical, cultural and legal issues need to be resolved before fully autonomous vehicles hit the road. “There is going to be trouble if [automakers] don’t get consumers involved early on. Or allow governments and insurance companies telling people when to hit the button (to drive),” Koslowski said. “You press the [drive yourself] button and you pay 30 percent more in insurance. About 39 percent of those we surveyed are interested in some sort of self-driving car — that doesn’t mean fully autonomous vehicles. But 61 percent say they are not ready.”

    Koslowski says there is a lot of education that includes basic acceptance of the technology and trust that it really works. “There usually is a 30-second rule. The first 30 seconds is ‘holy moly, this thing drives itself’,” he said. “The second 30 seconds is ‘is this beneficial?’ There are real benefits such as reducing the cost of accidents, which amount to $900 per U.S. citizen.”

    In terms of cyber security and privacy, Koslowski said it’s a big deal for autonomous vehicles. “A couple of breaches will be a big deal. Still, consumers are not that paranoid. They are willing to share information, especially if there is a monetary or societal function,” he said.

    Cost is still big factor that will drive the adoption of autonomous vehicles. Koslowski says that consumers polled will only pay an additional $1,404 for autonomous capability. The cost of a test vehicle, right now, is about $85,000. “The good news is that number is coming down. It is shrinking to less than $6,595,” he said.

    At the Transportation Research Board meeting a week after CES in Washington, Chris Urmson, who heads Google’s self-driving vehicle program, said the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket-looking gizmo on top of their car cost $70,000 alone.

    Cost aside, by 2016, three automakers will have concrete plans for upcoming autonomous vehicle launches, Koslowski said. “This is happening a lot faster from a technology standpoint than experts thought it would,” he said.

    Overall, Koslowski said that big IT companies need to step up to make autonomous vehicles work. “Governments are a little behind. The slowness of automotive companies also make them vulnerable to technology companies to step in and take over the industry,” he said.

    Indoor Positioning and Other Location Markets at CES

    Such companies as CSR were at CES and said the show was good for indoor location providers. “CES was good for us. We had good interest in our live demo of indoor location where customers were free to walk around testing the performance of our (solution). We also saw a lot of interest from the automotive market for an indoor/outdoor navigation (product), such as being able to find your way back to the car in a complex shopping mall and the best place to park for access to your indoor destination,” said Dave Huntingford, CSR’s director of product line for location.

    In 2015, the company believes that one of the key drivers for indoor location will be the ubiquity of maps for public locations, Huntingford said. “The availability of indoor maps for malls, airports and retail chains will help drive indoor location awareness with consumers for both utility value (not getting lost) and retail marketing applications,” he said. “We also expect to see a variety of social networking applications supporting indoor location, reflecting the fact that we spend the vast majority of time indoors.”

    Huntingford believes a key limitation of many indoor technologies is the requirement to have dedicated, or upgraded, infrastructure such as BT Smart beacons or updated Wi-Fi access points with new location capabilities, and a dedicated manual survey of the building to measure indoor Wi-Fi signatures.

    At CES, Magellan rolled out its line of 5-inch RoadMate Auto GPS Devices with 3D buildings and landmarks. “The units retail from $169 to $229. “We are surprised at the interest our PNDs are having in the market, particularly with back-up video,” said William Strand, Magellan associate director, product marketing. “The dash camera is a small market, but catching on to block insurance fraud.”

    In other CES news:

    • Audi pulled off a coup when it invited journalists to drive with its autonomous vehicle from San Francisco to Las Vegas.
    • Most location companies have wearables product lines that are making retail chains take notice.

    Transportation Research Board Meeting Becoming Big Autonomous Show

    WASHINGTON—The Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting here has grown to be one of the bigger autonomous vehicle meetings, with 12,000 mainly government execs and academics meeting.

    About 300 people showed up for a panel headlined by Chris Urmson, who heads up Google’s autonomous vehicle program. All was well and good hearing about Google’s self-driving vehicle technology except TRB had 100 chairs for 300 attendees…a lot of people left. But that is the level of interest autonomous vehicle is having in the government and academic community.

    “We are planning to find out how our car does with red lights flashing in front of it. The software will figure out, along with GPS and insertional and high-resolution maps,” Urmson said. “The world isn’t empty. Our vehicle has to know about the pick-up making a lane change, the bicyclist pedaling next to it.”

    Urmson said there are no sensors on the market that power the car — Google makes them in-house.

    In other TRB news, TomTom announced it is partnering with the I-95 Corridor Coalition. The company is using one of three main real-time traffic products in its portfolio, said Nick Cohn, TomTom senior business developer. “It is all about our TomTom Traffic Flow product, which provides speed information for individual road segments every minute, based on our mix of probe data sources,” he said. “This is one of three main real-time traffic products we have. TomTom Traffic provides one-minute updates of locations and delays of traffic jams and other traffic incidents. The third product is a set of APIs for providing, for example, travel times that can be displayed on variable message signs along roadways to inform drivers about delays.”

    The government market is a steady business for TomTom, which has seen traffic management success mainly in European cities such as Berlin, Rome and London, Cohn said.

     

  • CSR Preparing for Large Indoor Location Market

    CSR Preparing for Large Indoor Location Market

    SiRFusion SDK brings plug-and-play simplicity to Android app developers.
    SiRFusion SDK brings plug-and-play simplicity to Android app developers.

    With location industry consolidation, several companies are looking at established players to grow niche markets. United Kingdom-based CSR is leveraging several technologies to grow the nascent indoor location market into a powerhouse.

    As GPS World recently reported, Qualcomm agreed to buy CSR, based in the United Kingdom, for $2.5 billion to boost its automotive infotainment and Internet of Things (IoT) offerings.  The deal makes Qualcomm, which spun off its Gimbal location beacon technology into an independent company, a major competitor to chipmaker Broadcom.

    Long term, CSR believes that multiple technologies, ranging from satellite- and cellular-based to local beaconing, will allow consumers to expect higher quality location services, said Dave Huntingford, CSR’s director of the location product line. “As part of improving accuracy, we also expect to see the emergence of dual-frequency operation of GNSS in consumer automotive — and, as part of improving security, better spoofing protection,” he said.

    CSR recently launched its SiRFusion software development kit, SDK, for Android app developers. The company says the software will enable indoor positioning for developers who want to add such new capabilities as indoor location tagging and analytics for social networking.

    “We expect to see good pick-up of the solution over the next few months for a wide variety of location services, and being handset-agnostic is a big benefit for any developer. However, if you are looking for accuracy down in the meter range, you will need to add infrastructure to supplement the location calculation, which can come in many forms,” Huntingford said.

    Hutingford believes the big selling point for retailers is striking the balance between benefits they obtain from the app vs. benefits the consumer gets — what he calls the equity balance.

    “Too many irrelevant notifications while walking around the shop will result in people not wanting to run the app, and can potentially harm consumer acceptance of retail applications. The interest is already there from the retailer side as the benefits are somewhat obvious, but the question is, what do you give back to an increasingly technology-smart consumer?” he said.

    Overall, the indoor location market is attracting major interest in retailers — which is refreshing to many industry observers after seeing online sales cut into brick-and-mortar stores’ profits.

    “iBeacons and other beacons proved to be the fastest location-proximity technologies that are being deployed full scale by Macy’s, CVS, and other retailers for a first quarter 2015 rollout,” said Kris Kolodziej, an indoor location-based services advisor.  “I see more acquisitions like the one of Groupon acquiring Swarm Mobile, a beacon platform for smaller tier-two retailers and businesses. In addition, we will see more partnerships like the one between Gimbal and Urban Airship to provide a holistic outdoor-indoor solution for geofencing and engagement platforms.”

  • Ready for Black Friday: Study Shows Americans Aware of In-Store Beacons

    A new Placecast poll indicates that nearly 118 million smartphone owners will be relying on their phones for holiday shopping this year. For smartphone owners who plan to do holiday shopping, three out of four will use their phones to find sales, comparison shop, take pictures of possible gifts, and make purchases.

    The survey also showed that American shoppers are very aware of in-store beacons, despite the fact that it is a relatively new technology; more than half (52 percent) of the cell phone/smartphone owners surveyed said they have heard of in-store beacons, and 15 percent have engaged with them.

    “Brands that embrace beacons are highly likely to see a spike in their sales in the coming shopping season and in general,” said Placecast CEO Alistair Goodman.

    Beacon technology is only one indoor location technology being pursued by retailers. Kevin Dennehy’s Wireless LBS Insider column from August, Indoor Location Has Major Growing Pains, but Big Upside, provides an overview.

    Conducted in October among more than 2,000 U.S. adults, this was the fifth survey in Placecast’s Alert Shopper series, one of the longest running research series around how consumers interact with various marketing and purchasing mechanisms. This year’s poll reveals the latest trends in mobile shopping and provides key insights for brands and technology providers on how to connect with the highly connected consumer this holiday season, when stakes are high. The poll was conducted online within the U.S. for Placecast by Harris Poll.

    According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), holiday spending will be up nearly 5 percent this year compared to last year, with the average person expected to spend about $800. The NRF reports that gift givers “plan to splurge” for holidays like Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukah: “Consumers are spending more across the board on family, friends, co-workers, pets and even babysitters…Sales and discounts were listed as the most important factor.”

    “It’s not surprising that consumers are most influenced by sales and discounts; the question is, what is the best way to get these offers to them? Our survey looked at various ways brand can reach customers, and we found that reaching users on mobile while they are near stores, and using in-store technology — like beacons — are some of the best ways of reaching consumers who are looking for offers, or for more information to make a purchase,” said Goodman.

    Beacons are a small, low-cost piece of hardware installed in stores. They emit a signal (called Bluetooth low energy, or BLE) that can be targeted directly to phones. Beacons can bring the analytics and targeting capabilities of the online experience to physical stores — for example, sending a discount for perfume to a 40-year-old woman who has recently done an online search for scents.

    Because beacon technology is relatively new, the high awareness level discovered in this wave of the Alert Shopper series may seem surprising to the industry; the research team involved in data analysis for the Harris Nielsen poll explains the possible cause: “Consumers are clearly voting in favor of beacons due to stores promoting them and the value they deliver in couponing. While awareness seems high at 52 percent, this may be due to people wanting to identify with the coolness of new technologies, and certainly indicates huge promise for it. Minority Report is looking more and more like a reality than a movie,” said Kathryn Koegel, chief of Insights and Communications Steampunkt Collaborative.

    Goodman seconds this “halo effect” of new tech: “There could very well be a huge halo effect here, but nonetheless, one fact remains: we are all now assuming that there is technology in stores that can connect with our phones — whether it’s opening an app or getting a push notification. But the real art lies in delivering timely and useful ads and offers, not overwhelming the consumer, and making sure the promotions are targeted accurately.”

    The Alert Shopper V survey revealed that 15 percent of cell phone/smartphone owners had interacted with beacons. “Though this number is likely higher than the actual number of people who have interacted with in-store beacons, the fact that people are highly aware of them and think they interact with them bodes well for the technology,” said Koegel.

    The importance of in-store marketing was underscored by another data point from the Placecast survey; the top activity for Mobile Millennial females (women 18-34 who own a smartphone and plan on doing any holiday shopping this year) — when asked what they plan to use their smartphone for while holiday shopping this season — is searching for a coupon for a store they are already in, with over half (52 percent) looking to save money by checking their phones. The same percentage said they would use their smartphone to take a picture of a potential gift to text a friend or family member for their opinion (52 percent).

    The Alert Shopper Survey #5 revealed these key takeaways for brands and marketers this holiday season:

    • Phones are an integral part of the shopping process: among those who plan on doing any holiday shopping, 3 out of 4 smartphone owners plan to use their phones for some part of their gift-finding and buying experience.
    • Among all smartphone owners, searching for an item in a search engine to find a local retailer topped the list of mobile actions for holiday shopping this season, with 2 out of 5 (39 percent) saying they plan to use their smartphone for this; sending a picture of a potential gift to a friend or family member at a close second (38 percent), followed by searching for a coupon for the store they’re in (33 percent).
    • Mobile Millennials are the most active mobile shoppers this holiday season: Young men ages 18-34 (91 percent) and women ages 18-34 (85 percent) who own smartphones reported the highest percentages when asked if they plan to use their phones while shopping this holiday season; these Millennials make up about 25 percent of the United States population, outpacing Baby Boomers and Gen X (ages 28-38). Though they have not reached their peak spending potential, Millennials nonetheless control 21 percent of consumer discretionary purchases, which is estimated at over a trillion dollars in direct buying power and a huge influence on purchases by older generations (i.e., parents and grandparents).
    • Moms and dads with children under 18 in their household will be very active on mobile: 86 percent of dads plan to use their smartphones for holiday shopping this year. When asked what they will use their phones for the most popular answer among dads was “use my phone to look for an item in a search engine to find a local retailer.” Over half (54 percent) gave this answer. Three out of four (75 percent) mothers plan on using their smartphones for holiday shopping this year. While men are searching for retail locations, mobile moms selected “take pictures of potential gifts to text and get opinions from friends/family” as the top mobile activity, with nearly half (48 percent) saying they will do this.