In the “shoveling back the ocean with a fork” category, Apple today announces… iBeacon.
The iBeacon system uses an advanced version of Bluetooth to turn iPhones and iPads into either transmitters or receivers, so they can silently announce their presence to each other and communicate. The primary use for this is what’s called “indoor tracking” and kiosk sales - locating shoppers within a store and targeting digital marketing at them. Many stores already use iPads as sales panels for products and the trend towards this active digital display/sales kiosk model is rising sharply.
Now, though, when you walk into a store using active displays, they know you’re there, and start tailoring their displays to you, sending messages to your iPhone and guiding you to selected products. That’s just the early phases; the more imaginative of you can figure out where this is and will be going.
The real purpose, of course, is tracking and monitoring shopper interest and activity, just as has been done with less sophisticated systems for the last decade. (Look up in the next big store you’re in. You think all those little black-ball cameras are for security? Nope.)
Punchline? The iBeacon system is already installed on every iOS 7 device… so from announcement a few hours ago to implementation on nearly 200 million devices was… zero. The scary part is nearly all of those i-device owners are the type to think this is really kewllllll.