• Footwear Retailer Tests Shopping Offers with Beacon Payments
    In a significant step forward for its mobile local strategy, Shoe Carnival recently optimized its store location pages for mobile, driving a 200 percent increase in on-page interactions, and began testing mobile wallet offers to connect with shoppers via beacons.  The footwear retailer, which operates more than 400 retail locations, is scaling its local search marketing using SIM Partners’ local marketing automation platform Velocity with the goal of driving incremental in-store traffic and sales. 
  • Delayed Apple Watch Update Released
    Apple officially released Monday its watchOS 2 update with a number of security patches. The updated operating system was supposed to arrive Sept. 16, but was delayed due to an unspecified bug found in development. Apple posted a lengthy list of patches for watchOS 2 security vulnerabilities that could be a concern for IT admins dealing with employees bring their Apple Watch into work.
  • Sports Companies See IoT Marketing Opportunity
    Sports companies are becoming technology companies. Actually, that’s not news, so let’s go one louder than that. Sports companies are becoming technology-centric companies with a primary emphasis on software application development, social communities, web services and Internet of Things for data analytics/intelligence. As reported recently on Forbes, SAP is working with British soccer team Manchester City to implement big data in areas such as injury prevention, speed of rehabilitation tracking, training goals and everything from food intolerance to sleep patterns. As also reported recently by Stuart Lauchlan on Diginomica, “British soccer clubs Manchester United and Chelsea have each made major signings with Indian outsourcing …
  • Walgreens' Marketing Twist Includes Free Wearables to Track Health
    Mobile health data is one of those yin-yang concepts, where the potential to help consumers vastly outdistances other mobile efforts, but the potential to hurt them with devastating privacy losses is dangerous. Not only is the same true in retail healthcare — think Walgreens,Rite-Aid, CVS and the pharmacies within Walmart, Target and Kroger — but it can be even more pronounced. It's therefore only fair to give top-level kudos to Walgreens, which is bravely pushing the envelope, including one effort to give shoppers wearable devices that report health data — how much exercise is happening, at what level, what foods are being purchased, etc. — back to Walgreens. …
  • Making 'Things' Work Together Seen As Major Challenge
    It is naive to think that the role of integration in Internet of Things (IoT) is largely confined to machine-to-machine (M2M) integration. Unless specific data collected by IoT devices is processed and analysed to derive meaningful insights and/or develop innovative applications, it is difficult to attach any significant commercial connotation to enterprise IoT initiatives. The cost and complexity of integration continues to be a major roadblock to wider IoT adoption.
  • GoPro Chief on Drones, Apple Acquisition
    GoPro Inc., chief executive officer Nick Woodman denied suggestions of a purchase by Apple Inc. Tuesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, while also touching on the company’s new drone and on the lower-than-expected sales of GoPro's new camera. Last week analyst Northland Capital Markets analyst Gus Richard released a report suggesting that Apple buy the wearable camera maker. Woodman said that he doesn’t think Apple is exploring making GoPro-like devices.
  • Smart Home Platform Company Files for Bankruptcy
    Quirky, the parent company of smart home/internet of things (IoT) platform Wink, has just announced a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy following ongoing debt and other financial troubles. The corporate announcement, shared on theWink blog, also reveals that the company is now accepting bids for the purchase of the Wink platform. The current bid is said to be $15 million — an offer from Flextronics International USA Inc. — and the hope is that the sale can be closed within the next 60 days. The note adds that Wink users don't need to worry the product no longer working, as …
  • Beacons Added to More Than 1,000 Pizza Hut Restaurants
    Some 1,471 Pizza Hut restaurants in mainland China have installed Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons from Sensoro to send out coupons, WeChat movie ticket prizes, special offers and discounts directly to customers’ smartphones. “Customers in Pizza Hut restaurants just need to turn on Bluetooth on their mobile devices and open up the ‘Shake’ feature on WeChat to get a chance to receive discounts or gifts such as free movie tickets or prizes,” Sensoro says. “Customers can also easily view the menu by interacting with the iBeacon content.”
  • IoT Development Will Take Time, Says Report
    Eight in ten industry executives have taken some action to understand growing Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities as public and private sector organizations seek new ways to leverage connectivity. This is according to a research brief from CompTIA, the information technology (IT) industry trade association. The study, Sizing Up the Internet of Thingsfound that one in three executives believe these emerging IoT opportunities will improve their bottom line over the next one to two years. 
  • Beacons Tapped for Trade Show Experience
    Fashion trade show Panorama Berlin is the latest large event to leverage beacons to help navigate the experience via a mobile application, which 70 percent of users leveraged more than once. Panorama Berlin, which takes place twice a year, boasts more than 20,000 square meters of exhibition space, 8 hall, and 600 fashion brands.
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