Bar deploys Apple’s iBeacon to give patrons free access to Newsstand magazines

10 years ago

“iBeacon, Apple’s hyperlocal trigger tech in iOS 7, is an innovation that holds a lot of promise, and that will probably continue to make waves in the retail industry for a long time to come,” Darrell Etherington reports for TechCrunch. “One London-based company is using it in a slightly more novel way, employing them to help sell subscriptions to digital magazines.

“Exact Editions is the company, and the digital publishing startup already makes magazines targeted at iPhone, iPad and Android devices,” Etherington reports. “The use of iBeacons by Exact Editions is part of their ByPlace program, which launched earlier this year to help publishers specify certain locations where their titles could be available without the usual individual subscription fee.”

“The tech is very handy in a number of scenarios, as in a coffee shop for instance, where the establishment could subscribe and enable access to full magazines to patrons who come in,” Etherington reports. “It’s made even more convenient with the addition of iBeacons on iOS, as the whole digital handshake can happen automatically, providing the user with the best possible and most frictionless experience. Another possible use is in modernizing the doctor’s office, offering up publications in the waiting room that are more useful and more current than five-year old issues of Good Housekeeping. ‘As this is very much new technology we are showcasing it for the first time at Bar Kick in Shoreditch, London,’ Exact Editions’ Daniel Hodgkin explained about the first real world use of the tech. ‘When in this bar, the soccer magazine ‘When Saturday Comes’ and the fashion and culture magazine ‘Dazed & Confused will be available.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: This is just the beginning. Apple’s iBeacon will soon revolutionize many businesses and markets!

Note: iBeacon Compatible devices are currently:
• Apple iOS devices with Bluetooth 4.0 (iPhone 4S and later, iPad 3 and later, iPod touch 5, iPad mini and later)
• Android devices with Bluetooth 4.0 and Android 4.3 and later (Samsung Galaxy S3/S4, Samsung Galaxy Note II/III, HTC One, Nexus 7 2013 edition, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, HTC Butterfly, Droid DNA)
• Mac with OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) and Bluetooth 4.0 via the MacBeacon application from Radius Networks.