Eddystone has arrived to boost the proximity market and paves the way for a world full of context-aware applications. Google has addressed all the flaws detected by the community in the Apple iBeacon specification, meaning that even more companies and developers are going to create useful products using all the expertise that has been gathered over the last two years.
These are the key features that Eddystone brings:
Another important feature is the introduction of the Google Proximity Beacon API. It is a public beacon database from Google were anyone can store information related to a particular device, so now more than ever, we are going to be seeing more and more networks of public beacons created and shared with the world.
This also allows the beacon owners to manage information without having to change anything in the beacon itself, adding flexibility to the Eddystone protocol.
Google has also included latitude
and longitude
fields to the beacons stored in the cloud, so in the near future when there are enough beacons deployed in venues, it is more than likely that Google Maps will include Bluetooth Beacon detection to improve indoor location.
We are implementing the Eddystone protocol in the Android SDK and have some really cool ideas for Eddystone in our roadmap.
During the upcoming months, the market should validate all the ideas behind Eddystone and after this new technology takes hold, we are sure it will be more widely adopted than iBeacon was in 2013.
No news so far on what Apple's next move regarding the proximity market will be... but it would no doubt be beneficial for everyone if they decided to support Eddystone in the future... who knows...