Big data & analytics: 60 million iBeacons expected to ship in 2019, says ABI

Editor’s Note: The ecosystem of big data and analytics, and its intersection with mobile networks and cloud computing has increasing relevance to wireless in areas that include service assurance, customer experience management, mobile marketing, location-based services and more. Here is a look at the week’s news in this space. 
— ABI Research expects that the market for iBeacons/Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons will reach 60 million units in 2019, but noted that dropping prices mean this will translate to only about $500 million in hardware revenue.

Despite the current interest in the use of beacons in retail stores, ABI expects the retail sector’s use to be dwarfed by other uses such as in connected homes and personal asset tracking.

“It may surprise many to see that retail is the smallest market covered in the report. In building terms, many stores are relatively small in comparison to a corporate office or hospital, while the items being tracked, i.e.consumers, are already BLE-enabled through their smartphones, further limiting the number of beacons required,” said Patrick Connolly, senior analyst for ABI.

“Clearly, connected home and personal asset tracking have huge potential for BLE beacons and will feed into a much larger Internet of Everything,” according to ABI. “We will see silos of beacon networks emerging over the next 5 years, and larger companies like Apple and Google must consider how to aggregate this into a cohesive system, creating new revenue opportunities.”

The ecosystem has gotten a lot of attention and interest in the mobile ecosystem of late. Motorola recently announced a major new collaboration for its mobile marketing platform with iBeacons.

–Mobile real-time bidding company Smaato announced an agreement with Indonesia’s largest mobile operator, Indosat, to jointly promote and sell mobile advertising. The two companies will be working together to develop hyper-local mobile advertising programs.

—Extreme Networks announced that the Troy school district in Troy, Mich. is deploying both its 802.11ac Wi-Fi and network analytics solutions. Extreme’s Purview solution is expected to provide the district with better network visibility for IT planning purposes as well as user experience. The district has more than 12,000 students in 20 schools.

— Log management and analytics service Logentries announced a new partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for centralized monitoring and alerting for CloudTrail, CloudWatch and system log data. Logentries said that its analytics and monitoring solution was designed for cloud use, unlike traditional tools for log data.

— TMC recognized Empirix‘s Intellisight analytics platform for network and service management with its 2014 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award. 

—SAP was recognized in recent reports by Ovum and Forrest Research as a leading vendor for business intelligence solutions. The Ovum report in particular recognized the company’s BI work in areas including mobile, in-memory analytics, and predictive analytics.

—IBM is investing $3 billion over the next five years in research on next-generation chipsets to support the needs of cloud and big data, including the exploration of computing systems that mimic the human brain.

–Private investment firm ITWP, which is the parent company of digital market research and technology company Toluna, has acquired Harris Interactive Europe, which includes Harris Interactive operations in France, Germany and the U.K., from Nielsen.
Nielsen has owned the company since early 2014 and will continue to be a minority shareholder in ITWP with a cooperation agreement with Toluna, which has a large social voting community of more than 6 million members in more than 41 countries that participate in online and mobile surveys.