That’s more than just the mantra of the real estate industry. It’s also the focus of modern mobile technology and related services.

And in the location space, Google is losing ground — and fast — to its chief rival Apple.

There has been significant change at the top of the indoor location technology market, according to ABI Research. “Google’s lack of progress has cost it as Apple has taken the bull by the horns and is now driving this market forward,” the research giant recently summarized.

“The year 2015 could see a major jump as we see the first chain-wide deployments,” says Patrick Connolly, Senior Analyst. “The widespread availability of BLE beacons makes it very easy for retailers to deploy a light system to test the water and measure shopper acceptance. We will also see the first year where Ruckus Wireless, Aruba Networks, and the newly formed Zebra/Motorola all have a comprehensive offering that most likely will combine Wi-Fi with BLE and other technologies.”

According to a September report from ABI, the indoor location market is “now accelerating into the mainstream.”

The research behemoths say that new contracts and deployments of indoor location systems are being announced on an almost daily basis.

“Many companies have focused on one technology or vertical, but it’s clear that both the opportunity and competition is much greater,” Connolly says. “The industry needs to consider the whole ecosystem and which technologies are best suited to each application and vertical.”

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Driving this growth is a host of new technologies and companies entering the fray in 2014. The result, ABI says, will be an acceleration of adoption across all major verticals as a slew of new services and revenue opportunities emerge.

In ABI Research’s “Indoor LBS: Applications, Advertising, and Revenues,” the indoor location opportunity is considered across 11 retail verticals and all major technologies.

Senior analyst Patrick Connolly says 2014 will be a watershed year for indoor location technologies.

“In 2014,” Connolly projects, “a number of major retailers are approaching the end of their trial periods and we should start to see a step increase in deployments. iBeacons/BLE will also help to drive awareness and acceptance but are by no means the silver bullet here. Most importantly, retailers now understand the need to address the newly emerging smartphone shopper.”

“Analytics,” Connolly continues, “is a fundamental first step, but longer term, a combination of targeted in-store offers, hyperlocal search and in-application advertising will drive $5 billion in revenue in 2019, enabling retailers to better reach their customers both in-store and at home.”

The post The Bar Has Been Raised for Indoor Location Retail Revenues appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The reason? Early adopters are entering the final year of the three-year technology adoption cycle, shifting from trials to full-scale deployments.

Another critical driver, however, is the boom in BLE/iBeacons, which are creating a wave of second generation start-ups in this space that will help to drive new growth and use cases across all major verticals.

All told, this is expected to result in over 30,000 indoor location installations in 2014.

“We can clearly see major grocery and pharmacy chains really pushing towards this technology,” says ABI Senior analyst Patrick Connolly. “These are very competitive verticals, which can benefit significantly from identifying and targeting loyal customers. Both already have large loyalty and advertising/offers deals in place and from a practical point of view, in-store items can be difficult to find. All of this makes indoor location a perfect fit.”

It’s interesting to note how other verticals are looking at using the technology. In the fast food space, where indoor location was not originally envisioned as having major success, a small percentage improvement in queue lengths can translate into millions of dollars. A number of chains are now trialing the technology purely for that purpose.

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For starters, we’re looking at a $4 billion market (or more) by 2018.

The overall market of technology installations is forecast to break the 25,000 mark in 2014, while handsets capable of supporting indoor location will be in the hundreds of millions within two years. As a result, the major companies will start to make their moves.

In fact, they already are.

Today, the indoor location focus is on the retail space, but the potential in enterprise, corporate, and public venues is just as large, albeit with different drivers and inhibitors.

In ABI Research’s latest report, “Indoor Location for Commercial and Business Verticals,” key drivers such as corporate wellness, legislation, employee analytics, low-cost tags, BYOD, and security are all considered across 11 non-retail verticals.

“In the non-retail space, the current RTLS market is largely focused on tracking high-value or important items using high-accuracy and dedicated tags,” writes senior analyst, Patrick Connolly in a report summary. “But the ability to track connected devices and low-cost BLE tags will open up opportunities around staff analytics, visitor management, meeting scheduling, staff enterprise applications, building layout optimization, etc.

There is also huge potential in public-facing buildings like hospital, hotels, airports, schools, etc., resulting in over 40,000 installations of indoor location technologies in non-retail environments by 2019.”

The anticipated growth, not surprisingly, will be driven by new technologies.

ABI practice director, Dominique Bonte, says new technologies will, indeed, “give this market a major jolt in the arm.”

“Quuppa’s BLE technology and advances in Wi-Fi and small cell location will all better enable low-cost and high-accuracy across large buildings. IoE, wearables, and BYOD means there will be many more ways of tracking in the future, while the onset of low-cost BLE tags makes accurate asset tracking cost effective for all verticals, even consumers,” Bonte adds.

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As MMW has reported in the past, the vendor matrix compares 34 leading companies on 15 criteria across the broader categories of indoor location, analytics, and mapping Innovation and Implementation.

Google’s ability to address the full value chain coupled with recent announcements around sensor fusion, indoor mapping, and always-on location mean it is very well placed. But it must be pointed out that this is not another market that Google is going to dominate.

As ABI explains, Qualcomm has publicly announced its iZat ubiquitous location platform, which forms the background of its Gimbal developer platform, featuring an array of related technologies such as always-on location, geofencing, object recognition, and a variety of location technologies. It is also driving innovation around Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE in terms of future indoor location technologies.

Motorola has been quietly developing a compelling solution, which it now needs to support with a full VAS suite. All other major Wi-Fi access point vendors have now entered the market with Aruba Networks and Ruckus Wireless joining the ever-present Cisco.

“When we look at the emerging start-ups, NextNav, Movea, ByteLight and Insiteo occupy similar positions as acquired companies such as WifiSLAM and Meridian did last year,” says ABI senior analyst, Patrick Connolly. “Bluetooth will be the big technology trend next year, but in terms of acquisition the focus will be sensor-fusion, RF mapping, and new technologies such as visible light. ABI Research has also identified a number of new entrants that should be watched, such as InvisiTrack, iPosi, Senionlab, Indoo.rs, and ShopperTrak.”

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