As smaller, more mobile devices come to market powered by Bluetooth low energy (BLE) – such as fitness trackers, smart watches and other wearables – the issue of connectivity has been at the center of development.
Today, many of these devices must pair with a smartphone and a branded app in order to achieve Internet connectivity.
This forces the owners of wearables to always have their matching smartphones on hand, and eliminates the possibility to use any available smartphones to connect BLE devices.
Some have suggested that the industry should move toward more ubiquitous connectivity, based less on branded pairing and more on available devices, to allow seamless connectivity between BLE devices and the Internet.
However, this approach eliminates an important component from the process: apps.
Without apps, the availability of continuous and targeted data is lost, something many brands are not going to part with unceremoniously.
There are IoT beacons, which enable data to be collected from BLE devices within a foot of the beacon’s location. While this data is valuable – location, behavior, and temperature, for instance – it is limited to when the user is within a foot of the beacon.
But we are talking here about the greater good of IoT connectivity: enabling IoT devices powered by BLE to become liberated from app-driven connectivity as well as branded pairing.
The pain point here is, this approach may cause brands to sacrifice data for the sake of advancing wireless capabilities, and it is uncertain whether or not they will be able to come to terms with the change.