IBeacons In Retail And Education

Apple’s latest invention, the iBeacon technology is redefining many sectors and education and retail are no different. iBeacon are basically low cost, low powered signal transmitting devices which are essentially GPS for indoors. In education, these devices can promote location aware learning on a bigger and wild scale. As far as retail is concerned, there is a massive potential to use these Blue Tooth Low Energy Beacons. 

iBeacons in Education 

iBeacons offer schools and other educational institute a great opportunity to totally revolutionise the way they teach their students. iBeacons can help them promote positional and location aware learning by action as a channel between information and the children. 

They will further encourage children to use Apple’s iPad which will provide teachers with a familiar and easy to use tool to develop educational content that offers systematic hands on learning experience to children. Furthermore, iBeacons will enable academics to curate lessons and resources based on time and location. This will make children learn new things from the comfort of their homes. 

iBeacons in Retail 

If retailers are clever enough to use iBeacons in a creative manner, they will surely be relishing the decision to install them in their workplace. The biggest problem of the retailers is that they usually find it difficult to create something which supports rest of their customers as well as Apple’s standard. For instance, NFC doesn’t support Apple at all. iBeacons enable system integrator and manufactures to create platforms which are supportive to Android, iOS and Windows.

This is a great opportunity for retailers to serve most of their customers in best manner possible. Hardware manufacturers have been struggling to overcome to the problem of accurately locating indoor customers. With the invent of iBeacons, large shopping centers, stores, stadiums and museums can provide useful information to their customers price accuracy convenience and in their immediate environment. 

Last but not the least, beacons are cheap and do not require maintenance or regular basis. Some the models can even run for two years on a single coin battery which greatly reduces the manufacturing price while increasing retailers profits.