Samsung's Beacon has some minor flaws

At the recent Samsung Developer Conference, Samsung released its own Beacon technology in an attempt to compete with Apple's technology.

Apple's Beancon is based on Bluetooth low energy BLE4.0 technology. When a handheld device is close to a Beacon base station, the device can sense the Beacon signal, trigger a specifically developed APP, obtain resources from the local or network, and display them to the handheld device.

Samsung's Beacon technology is also based on BLE4.0 technology, but it integrates Beacon services at the bottom of the system and opens this service to certified partners.

This service should include:

1) Basic Beacon settings information;

2) The geo-fence where the Beacon is located. This geo-fence is a relatively large concept, equivalent to the concept of a geographical cell. All registered Beacon information in this geo-fence should be automatically downloaded to the Samsung mobile phone. The mobile phone can avoid constantly scanning nearby base station information, thereby saving power;

3) Resources corresponding to Beacon triggering events, such as the information that a mobile phone needs to access when approaching or leaving a base station;

Apple's Beacon technology only provides an application access interface, and the rest is done by the APP. I feel that Apple's concept is that in the early stage, I only provide technology, whether you like to use it or not, I will put it there, and if it becomes popular in the future, it seems to be a small effort to achieve a great result.

Samsung is in a difficult position. First of all, the service is only provided to certified partners. What about the Beacons deployed by thousands of small businesses? Do you ignore them? Then your application scope is too narrow. If we analyze it purely from a technical point of view, the advantage of automatically downloading all registered Beacon information in the geo-fence to Samsung mobile phones is that it can save power, but the disadvantage is that your mobile phone keeps "stealing" traffic in the background. In a country where traffic is charged, no one dares to use it. Another limitation is that the developed APP is only for Samsung's platform, and Samsung is only a part of the Android market, not to mention iOS.

Beacon has a good application prospect, but everyone is on the sidelines. Samsung is considered to be an active and proactive player, but I feel that there are two roles that are more suitable for doing such things.

One is Google, the father of Android, which provides services to developers at the system level. However, within a powerful local area network, the final outcome of this service is like an app store, and there will be many of them in China.

The second one is X-BAT (original name), which is the current or future Internet giant in China. BAT provides similar services through its own super APP.

For example, in the background of Alipay, Alipay provides each merchant with Beacon registration management information. The merchant manages the corresponding information of the product and Beacon by himself. When the user passes by the door of the merchant, targeted advertising information will pop up automatically. This advertising information has time and geographical tags. When the user leaves this geographical range or after a period of time, this advertising information will automatically disappear, with zero impact on the user. Just thinking about such an application scenario is intoxicating.

At the same time, the Beacon, which is uniformly managed by the BAT background, has a limited UUID range, which can also avoid the mobile phone from constantly scanning, thus saving power more conveniently.

Actually, the X in X-BAT refers to Xiaomi. Why is Xiaomi singled out? (I am also a Mi fan.) Xiaomi not only has a similar layout to BAT, but also has a customized MIUI system, which can integrate services similar to Samsung or Google from the system level.

In summary, whether from a technical or market perspective, Samsung's Beacon service feels a bit thankless.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.