—Motorola Solutions announced a new indoor location platform for mobile marketing that integrates both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart, instead of separate platforms for the two technologies.
The MPact Platform for Mobile Marketing has three levels of location services: presence, zone and position that “pinpoint the exact location of customer devices in relation to the merchandise they are looking at,” according to Motorola. The company is collaborating with four vendors to make the platform an end-to-end solution: Aisle411 lets shoppers find products with inventory-searchable indoor maps and simultaneously receive special offers based on their location in the aisle; the Localpoint solution from Digby integrates customer engagement and measures “performance at every step of the customer journey from neighborhood to front door to the aisle.”; Phunware provides multi-screen solutions for engage, managing and monetizing users, and Swirl’s beacon marketing platform enables delivery of messages and content to customer while they shop.
Meanwhile, Strategy Analytics reported this week that momentum behind indoor location and advertising, including growing interest from emerging markets, is set to boost mobile location-based services.
“In addition to the continued adoption of mobile LBS in rising mobile data markets, venue owners and brands are increasingly testing the capabilities of mobile devices to deliver enhanced customer experiences and engagement,” said Nitesh Patel, director of wireless media strategies at Strategy Analytics. “We see the increasing activity around indoor location and mobile marketing by brands, retailers and owners of complex venues as a clear signal that indoor LBS and location-enhanced marketing will drive the next wave of growth in the mobile LBS sector.”
—ServiceSource and the Technology Services Industry Association have a new joint white paper on using consumption analytics to grow recurring revenue. The white paper focuses on “how technology providers must become experts at monitoring consumption in order to gauge customer success and ensure their products are delivering value” and offers ServiceSource’s recent acquisition of Scout Analytics as a proof point of the concept.
—Cirro garnered an investment from GE Ventures in its series A funding round, adding to funds from Toba Capital, Frost Data Capital and Miramar Venture Partners.
Cirro focuses on enabling on-demand analysis across disparate data sources. The company said the funding will be used for product line expansion, scaling the company’s professional services and increasing sales and marketing.
–Medical technology startup LifeMap Solutions is collaborating with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai on new m-health solutions that leverage biomedical and other personal big data. While few details were disclosed, the company said that the planned products are “interactive mobile applications that will connect users with their complex personal health information and other big data.”
LifeMap this week received $5 million in seed funding from parent company LifeMap Sciences (a subsidiary of BioTime) and in-kind support from the Icahn School of Medicine.
