Hat’s off to Tesco – they are running an iBeacon trial on one of their Essex stores.
There’s not a lot of information coming out of the trial and, why would they want to give out this commercially sensitive information.
There are a few references to this trial in some of the mobile business web sites, but they are all missing the point.
[They] pontificate on the whys and hows of this trial and comment that, “Tesco don’t want to alienate the shoppers by providing too many push notifications etc etc”.
This type of thinking (and this isn’t Tesco’s thinking, we’re sure) is wrong on every level.
Why should Tesco customers download an app for a supermarket and then NOT be sent notifications.
This system will only work on the very latest Android devices and iPhones that have been upgraded to iOS7 (and are as new/newer than an iPhone 4s).
Users are going to try this technology in a way that ANY old DVD was worth having back in the 1990’s. It doesn’t matter what push notifications are sent. It doesn’t matter whether it works. It doesn’t matter whether only 4 people that go through the doors actually interact with this system.
What does matter, however, is that Tesco are thinking ahead. They’ve decided that they need to experiment with this tech’ and they need to do it quickly.
iBeacons are not going to go away and within 18 months every phone being used will be equipped to work with BlueTooth Low Energy devices.
Take a bow Tesco.
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