“Unless consumers start carrying around two iPhones, investors are still waiting for Apple to come up with the next profit-driving monster,” Dan Newman writes for The Motley Fool.
“Many think this might be a role for the rumored iWatch. However, at an estimated selling price at half of an iPhone, around $300, and a consumer interest yet to be confirmed,” Newman writes. “But, one device that links up with iThings anywhere just might give Apple an iPhone-sized financial boost: an iBeacon transmitter for every home and business.”
“Imagine walking past the grocery store and receiving a notification of a sale on your favorite brand of cereal. Or, after sitting at a bar for an hour, receiving a coupon for your next round of drinks. Or, leaving a clothing store and automatically being charged for the items that you ordered to fit. iBeacon can do these things with low-energy Bluetooth technology, or BLE,” Newman writes. “Apple introduced iBeacon in 2013, and recently came out with standards needed to earn consent for use of the trademark. There are many variations of iBeacons that third-party manufacturers have designed, like Estimote’s rock-shaped transmitter, or the more utilitarian AIRcable USB dongle. However, a more Apple-esque design might come from the company. According to FCC filings, Apple has tested an iBeacon transmitter that it would manufacture itself.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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ANALyst don’t get it. The more Apple wait to came out with a new iDevice or new iPhone, the more the clone makers lose money. Look how much time has passed since the last iphone and which company has came out with something new in the smart phone arena?.. none.
Now with almost a year of “Apple’s iWatch” rumors, smart watches come and go and none of them stays.
Keep holding Apple, let all those copy cats keep wasting money trying to get guess what’s your new iDevice will be.
The funniest part… Samsung’s “iWatch” is a COPY of what they imagined Apple’s iWatch would be. They basically tried to cram every rumored iWatch feature into an incoherent mess. And they did a rush job on it, to beat Apple to the finish. Except Apple wasn’t racing Samsung, and what Apple DOES eventually release will be completely different from an exercise in down-scaling an iPhone to fit the wrist.
“Hold out baits to entice the enemy”
“Draw them in with prospect of gain, take them by confusion.”
“Those who render others’ armies helpless without fighting are the best of all.”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
iPod, iPhone & iPad were insanely great innovations, where Apple studied the techno-landscape piecing together technologies with other technologies to better the user experience with what we all saw as a new creation. Those were not inventions but innovations of hardware with “only Apple can do” software… hence no matter there was first an I’mWatch in Italy or a Samsung Watch… fail or not… Apple studies the techno-landscape and provides an overhaul in user experience and true reason for a product to exist. Its not copying… call it improving beyond what other expect. IF ever Apple comes out with a iWatch or iTV it will be a well studied device aimed at profit yet built with quality and the user in mind.
Very unlikely that the next big money maker would leak this way into FCC…
Sounds more like an accessory for something else…
iBeacon used this way sounds more annoying than useful. How many more notifications do we need to clutter up our lives vying for our attention?
It’s all down to how the apps use the iBeacons. If some particular app becomes annoying you delete the app..
Or have the notifications accumulate somewhere and you peruse them later at your convenience. Anything like discounts could just be automatically reflected in the bill and not be waving it’s arm to get your attention it’s happening.
Annoying to some, unless it is for your benefit.
If YOU decide you want your outside lights to go on for your wife when she drives up out front at night, then an iBeacon sensing her iPhone and thus turning on the outside lights could be a big plus.
The other side of this is detecting when your kid in the mega-store suddenly starts to move away from Mom and yet she gets a warning buzz.
Lots and lots of good reasons exist for you to set up an iBeacon or two at home. Not everyone will do it, but it will grow on us over time.
Obviously being able to set controls right for each user will be paramount.
a defensive device too –
Android has been detected passing the property – go into stealth mode and block all signals – hahahaha
“Imagine walking past the grocery store and receiving a notification of a sale on your favorite brand of cereal.”
But if it is NOT your favorite brand of cereal, it becomes annoying. And you then block that store from sending you any more beacons. Something for advertisers to keep in mind.
Seems like a minefield doesn’t it? Sending out blanket ads and offers to many and getting a sale out of only a handful needs to stop. Technology also seems to waste a lot more of our time. Like with automated calls who put you through every variation before the one you need, instead of just a human operator instantly connecting and directing your call in a fraction of the time. THIS is progress? Maybe AI will change that someday.
The difference is, if you are in a store and they annoy you with a slew of UNWANTED ads, the whole store suffers because you will block that store. Or worse, walk out never to return.
> Imagine walking past the grocery store…
Way too much “imagining”… not enough reality. How is this going to be a “killing” for Apple? It sounds like another “enabler” that helps sell more of Apple REAL money-making products.
Good thing Apple makes a living with their well known devices. Living is so much more fun, honest.
Ah, yes. Motley Fool has the answer to all of Apple’s terrible woes.
“Imagine walking past the grocery store and receiving a notification of a sale on your favorite brand of cereal. Or, after sitting at a bar for an hour, receiving a coupon for your next round of drinks.”
I’d rather not.
The internet is already 98 percent advertising. Will Apple make it 100 percent. Must we be barraged while we walk down the street! If so my iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch are going out with the trash!
Or imagine walking around Target and finding out that they are tracking your every movement by the pings the Wifi in your phone gives off even though you’re not connected to their network. And that when you go the checkout and pay with a credit card that they can tie that to your real life identity. And know everything you do in every Target store (or just passing through the parking lot) everywhere from then on and not only use that information to market to you, but to sell that information without your knowledge or consent.
Now stop imagining because it’s real. Remember to put your phone in Airplane mode if you patronize this Orwellian company selling Chinese products. And put on your tinfoil hat!
That’s why IOS spoofs its MAC address when searching for networks.
iBeacon is a neat technology, but I don’t want my life to become inundated with ads whenever I pass near someplace.
I always know when a headline has vagueness like “One device could” that it’s got to be Motley Fool link spam. Ugh.