“What we have is a permission-based marketing tool. Users can choose to receive or reject the message,” defends Niyaz Mohammed, managing director, Outbox-Marketing Redefined. The company, which provided bluetooth infrastructure for Nirmal Lifestyle, is in talks with retail chains such as Mocha and the Future Group, of which Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd is a part.
As a wireless technology, Bluetooth is often used instead of cable. With a typical range of 10 feet, it is commonly used for short range data transfers -- such as songs or images – from mobile to mobile, or mobile to PC. In addition, advertisers such as Lee Jeans and Idea Cellular Ltd have worked with mobile marketing companies such as Mobile2Win India Pvt Ltd, GroupM, Inc and ActiveMedia Technology Ltd. for short-term campaigns at malls and retail chains over the last year.
But companies are now looking beyond peer-to-peer applications and one-off campaigns to grow. In fact, the technology is finding several applications in the retail space.
Phoneytunes, for example, has deployed bluetooth kiosks at 38 Sony Ericsson retail outlets across the country to allow users to download ringtones, wallpapers and songs. The kiosk resembles an ATM machine – the user selects the song or image from the on-screen menu and feeds money into a slot. The kiosk then sends out the selected song to the user’s cell phone. Phoneytunes is in talks with telecom operators to deploy similar kiosks in customer care centres.
Another scalable model is the deployment of bluetooth-enabled mobile printers. The small, handheld devices receive data from a cell phone, and give instant printouts. Telibrahma has sold 280 such devices worth Rs40,000 each, to the Bangalore Traffic Police. The traffic police will be equipped with Blackberry handsets that communicate with a central information server to get real time information such as the driver’s name, address and past offenses. A policeman can select type of offense and print out the ticket on the bluetooth printers.
“We have tested the system in the Cubbon Park area with favourable results. It saves the trouble of manually writing out tickets and maintains better records,” says N Narasimhaiah, ACP (Traffic Planning), Bangalore Traffic Police. The mobile printers will be deployed across the city by end-October. The company is also in talks with authorities to deploy the devices across Delhi, Jaipur, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and in major South Indian cities.
Consumer applications for bluetooth are also picking up. Bangalore-based Motvik Technologies Pvt Ltd, for instance, has developed a mobile application called Webcam Where I Go (WWIGO), which turns the camera on the user’s mobile into a webcam. The camera communicates with the PC using bluetooth, so users can walk around holding the cell phone, instead of using a webcam wired to the computer. Since the application went beta in June, WWIGO has been downloaded 40,000 times and sees an average of 500 downloads per day.
“We have tracked downloads in 125 countries, with the highest in India and Italy,” says Thiyagarajan M, co-founder, Motvik. Another consumer product gaining popularity is wireless headsets powered by bluetooth. Motorola Inc has introduced some 10 models of wireless headsets for mobile phones and audio devices.