Indoor location retail deployments will reach over one million by 2020, with the market set to exceed $10 billion in revenue, according to ABI Research.
BLE beacons are expected to serve as a building block for retail indoor location technology, the research firm said.
“What is really interesting is how rapidly beacons are spreading into all 11 retail verticals covered in the database, in particular QSR (CAGR 84.4%) and convenience stores (CAGR 47.1%) are two of the fastest growing verticals over the forecast period,” said Principal Analyst Patrick Connolly.
ABI Research has forecast some major chain-wide deployments over the next 12 months, but there will also be huge growth in key verticals like grocery, big box, and malls, according to Connolly.
Other indoor location technologies such as Wi-Fi, audio/ultrasound and small cells/LTE are also still viable.
“Wi-Fi has faced a difficult 12 months, but ABI Research is still forecasting very strong growth for indoor location deployments,” Connolly said. “Major access point OEMs like Cisco, Zebra, Ruckus, and Aruba are being joined by Nomi, iSign, SPREO, Swirl, and inMarket in offering hybrid Wi-Fi/BLE solutions.
He said pure play Wi-Fi start-ups like AllUnite and Euclid are also building up an impressive list of clients.