Whoosh PR (www.whooshpr.com), the specialist telecoms, mobile and emerging technologies PR agency, today announces that it has been selected by award-winning app developer Mobikats (www.mobikatsenterprise.com) to launch its enterprise iBeacon platform.
Called Beura – Gaelic for iBeacon – the platform brings location based relevance to smartphones. It enables brands to track audiences in real space, reward audiences in real time and engage with them at the right time and place.
Beura iBeacons technology enables brands to reach out to customers or staff by enabling content such as promotions, information and much more to be presented to users based on their proximity to an iBeacon. Beura targets retail, industry and entertainment or any other venture that can benefit from a location-specific app experience.
iBeacons are low energy Bluetooth transmitters about the size of a £2 coin, which transmit a unique identifier at regular intervals. iPhones and other smartphones can detect the presence of iBeacons, which means developers can build applications that respond to the presence of iBeacons, enabling them to notify users of offers, information or deliver an interactive experience relevant to their location.
Once a user has installed an app which uses iBeacons, the phone will respond to iBeacons when they are detected, regardless of whether the app is running at the time. If the app is running, the user is automatically taken to a screen dedicated to the relevant iBeacon. If it isn’t currently running, the user will be presented with a notification, which can be tapped to launch to specific screens dedicated to each iBeacon.
A key advantage iBeacons have over other wireless location-based technology is their simplicity. They are designed to do one thing: transmit a unique ID. All the processing of what to do with the ID is left to the phone application. The value of this approach is that iBeacons are low-cost, they can work for years on a watch battery and are therefore also incredibly easy to deploy. This means they are astoundingly flexible and can be used anywhere from shops, theatres, museums and galleries to industrial sites and outside attractions, such as shows and music festivals.
“Whoosh has perhaps unrivaled expertise and knowledge of developing and launching high-impact media campaigns into the B2C consumer and B2B technology spaces,” says Phill Hunt, Mobikats CEO.