Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Touched upon at Apple's WWDC conference in June but wallowing in radio silence since, iBeacons is Apple's answer to NFC. Whereas NFC relies on inexpensive tags at very close proximity to trigger an action, iBeacons uses small wireless sensors equipped with Bluetooth low energy (BLE) that can detect an iPhone at a wide variety of ranges up to roughly 160 feet, allowing for different actions depending on the distance from each beacon.

Sensing both region and range, it's kind of like an indoor GPS system but with greater precision. To be sold to store owners and myriad potential users, and hovering at around $99 for a set of three, the beacons themselves are far more pricey than the NFC sticker tags, which can run about a buck apiece. But the technology allows for almost limitless possibilities.

At the retail level, stores can use iBeacons as a means to draw the customer inside. Once within a beacon's wireless region near the entrance, a retailer can transmit a coupon or sales promotion that could beckon potential customers. And once inside the store, several indoor beacons can triangulate a customer's position and allow the shopper's micro-location to trigger information on the products he or she is near. (iBeacons' developers used a museum tour as an example.)...