Smart beacon technology has various potential applications and can be used for mobile payments and shopper analytics. It can be implemented beyond retail environments at airports, museums, concert venues, and theme parks. Smart beacons provide a digital extension into the physical world and potentially connect online and offline marketing strategies. iBeacons’ continued emergence into the worlds of business, education, leisure, and tourism, among others, is proving to be a major game-changer.
Segmental Insight
The global smart beacon technology market has been segmented on the basis of standard, connectivity type, offering, end use, and region.
On the basis of the standard, the market has been segmented into iBeacon and Eddystone. IBeacon is developed by Apple Inc. and was introduced in 2013 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. The technology allows mobile apps on both Android and iOS platforms to react with Beacon’s signals in the real world. It is a close-proximity technology and extremely accurate indoors. It does not track users everywhere they go and thus, offers privacy. iBeacon holds the largest share in the global smart beacon technology market. In 2015, Google released the Eddystone beacon as an open protocol. The Eddystone segment is expected to register significant growth during the forecast period. It offers added features as compared to the iBeacon and sends 4 packets as part of the Bluetooth connectivity signal. On the basis of connectivity type, the market has been segmented into Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and hybrid. Most smartphones and other devices today are Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon compatible. Thus, the BLE smart beacon segment is expected to register significant growth during the forecast period.
On the basis of offering, the market has been segmented into hardware, software, and service. On the basis of end users, the market has been segmented into retail, transportation & logistics, and public gathering & spaces.
Regional Insight
Geographically, the global smart beacon technology market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America and the Middle East & Africa (LAMEA).
Europe holds the largest share in the global smart beacon technology market as countries in the region are early adopters of technology and have significant presence of industry leaders. For instance, Kontakt.io, a key leader in smart beacon technology has prominent presence in Europe – from hardware to in-house R&D, design, engineering, and operations.
North America has been recording strong growth in the smart beacon technology market with extensive penetration of smartphones and large-scale technological adoption by retailers. The e-commerce sector has been witnessing significant demand from developed countries in the region, especially the U.S. and Canada and retailers are using smart beacon technology to offer a personalized, digital and rich content-driven shopping experience to customers. This growing demand for smart beacons in the retail industry has been driving market growth in the region.
Asia Pacific has been registering healthy growth in the smart beacon technology market, with increasing number of smart city projects and rapid growth of the retail sector. Among all regions, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa (LAMEA) are expected to account for the least share in the smart beacon technology market.
Competition Analysis
Some of the key players in the global market are Estimote (US), Bluvision (An HID Global Company) (US), Onyx Beacon (Romania), Kontakt.io (Poland), Leantegra (US), Blesh (US), Aruba (A Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company) (US), Cisco (US), BlueUp (Italy), Gimbal (US), JAALEE Technology (China), Sensoro (US), Swirl Networks (US), Beaconinside (Germany), and Accent Systems (Spain).
The global smart beacon technology market is concentrated with a limited number of players operating in the market. These companies are rely on mergers, acquisitions, new product launches, and innovation to enhance their market shares.