The Era of Bluetooth
How Bluetooth might change how we interact with retailers.
If you look carefully at the use mobile phones today one realize that something groundbreaking is about to happen — the era of Bluetooth is about to begin.
I’ve been interested in Bluetooth technology for a while and I recently realized something that I don’t think many has paid much attention to yet. It’s not very long ago most people never activated Bluetooth on their phones, but now they’re connecting their phones to smartwatches, wireless headsets, cars, and speakers. Bluetooth is rapidly becoming widespread in its use and adoption. Several companies are also embracing Bluetooth (through beacons) as a means of communication. Bluetooth, and beacons, enables companies to send location based messages and information to customers, making it less intrusive as the messaging becomes more relevant. But it’s more than just messaging. Bluetooth and beacons is being embraced for a variety of commercial use-cases.
The most interesting development is still relatively new. Apple became the first company to drop their aux port. Many might not remember that Apple was the one to launch the Bluetooth protocol “iBeacon” for one-way communication in mid-2013. This was the first protocol for one-way communication through Bluetooth created by a large company. Given the increased commercial interest in beacons and Bluetooth, it makes a lot of sense that Apple want to push people to activate Bluetooth by default. If iPhones becomes the preferred phone for developers and companies to launch Bluetooth products and features to, iPhone might retain its’ throne for a while longer.
I personally believe that Bluetooth is going to be the technology that bridges the online and offline world. Connecting data, insights, and maybe artificial intelligence to your current location and situation can create value and value propositions not even thought of yet. My startup Proxloop is now working on leveraging this new technology and trend to create value in retail. We see that retail is going to be one of the first industries to adopt Bluetooth as a large-scale way of gather customer insights in-store, and as a measure of direct communication. We’re using Bluetooth to identify customers as they enter the store, and this has the potential to change the way customer experiences are created both in the physical retail and in e-commerce. Tying together online and offline commerce is one of the most interesting, and groundbreaking, trends in retail.
I’m curious to see if Apple, Google or Samsung is coming out with new Bluetooth technologies in the future, and how this will disrupt all kinds of industries!
