> Maybe the existence of such toolkits is a Chesterton's Fence that says you can't make this work without something installed on the phone. But this would be possible without these trojans.
Without these trojans the store would have on its hands a major networking infrastructure project. With these trojans, all they have to do is drop a few battery-powered beacons in their venue and store their IDs along with coordinates in a database.
"The store" that implements these is probably not a mom-and-pop. Places like Walmart succeed because of their ability to execute major logistics and networking projects.
If the beacons increased Wal-Mart's revenue by 1%, the "major networking infrastructure" project could be a $5 billion department, larger than Google's entire R&D operating expenses.
Sure, but the Beacon technology was designed for this cheaper type of use (dumb beacon, smart phone) from the get-go - people working on it probably may have wanted it to be useful not just for the biggest chains, but also smaller franchises and mom-and-pop stores (why limit your market prematurely?). In the alternate reality in which BLE beacons were never created, maybe Wal-Mart did its own major project to get the same results the hard way.
Can't compare revenue to operating expenses for funding a new department, should use earnings minus income taxes instead. It would be closer to funding a $1 billion department.
Without these trojans the store would have on its hands a major networking infrastructure project. With these trojans, all they have to do is drop a few battery-powered beacons in their venue and store their IDs along with coordinates in a database.