Telecom Lead America: Google faces challenges in retail
indoor location technologies market.
ABI Research said Google will not dominate the $5 billion
indoor location technologies market.
Since retailers will want to maintain control of in-store
data, advertising, and CRM, start-ups and infrastructure providers will see
significant success.
Carriers will gain. Telecom operators will benefit from
the onset of small cells.
Competition is emerging between handset-based and
dedicated infrastructure-based approaches. Both have a role to play, depending
on the application.
There will be over 200,000 installations of
infrastructure equipment by 2017, across Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc., with over 800
million branded application downloads.
Revenues will come from multiple sources, including
advertising, infrastructure deployments/service fees, and application
management. However, analytics is the area best placed for initial uptake,
representing the path of least resistance. Long term, advertising will play a
major part, with in-store offers/couponing representing over 40 percent of
revenues in 2017,” said Patrick Connolly, senior analyst, ABI Research.
Major US retail brands will all launch indoor location
technologies in 2012 and 2013 to enable advances in customer analytics, store
optimization, proximity advertising, couponing, and CRM.
More than 30 big name IC vendors, start-ups, carriers,
handset OEMs, and infrastructure providers (Wi-Fi, small cell, DAS, etc.) will
be competing to win this space.
