It has been a breakthrough year for indoor location for retail, with ABI Research’s quarterly indoor location technology tracker forecasting deployments to approach 25,000 by the end of 2014, up more than 100% on 2013.

"Vertically, the bulk of deployments are in clothing, big box, grocery, and shopping malls in 2014, driven by a variety of applications such as customer analytics, offers/coupons, product search, staff management, and navigation," says ABI Research Senior Analyst Patrick Connolly. "Looking into 2015, we can expect to see the quick serve restaurant (QSR) market growing with a significant demand for queue management technologies as illustrated by companies like Starbucks and Taco Bell which launched queue-skipping smartphone applications in 2014.”

He adds that we're seeing growth across all major technologies, including BLE, Wi-Fi, and audio, with 2015 being an important year for handset-based location, sensor fusion, magnetic field, and LED. Regionally, the focus is very much on the United States in 2014 but there are now many worldwide deployments. This is a market where ABI Research expects to see concurrent growth across the globe with a slew of regional and vertical winners, rather than one company dominating the whole space.