Let me make sure I’ve got this straight.
Apple ships a 64-bit processor. Qualcomm labels it a marketing gimmick. Then Qualcomm announces their own 64-bit processor, saying, “We see this transition happening and we want to be there to help enable the ecosystem.”
OK, got it. But wait, there’s more.
Now Qualcomm is shipping their version of the Apple iBeacon.
Gimbal is a comprehensive context aware, proximity platform for brands to engage their customers’ mobile devices with highly relevant communications using a powerful combination of physical location, activity, time and personal interests. Gimbal helps increase the relevance of content delivered to end users’ devices, filtering out the irrelevant and offering more personalized experiences, thereby allowing retailers, venues, content providers and developers to send personalized high-value content to enhance their users’ mobile devices. The overall Gimbal context aware platform supports iOS® and Android™; while the new Gimbal proximity beacons support iOS today with planned support for Android.
Some original thinking, Qualcomm.
The good news is, this expands the platform. Any iOS apps that make use of iBeacon technology will just work with Qualcomm’s Gimbal. As it should be.
Yes some original thinking: http://beekn.net/2013/12/inside-gimbal-qualcomm-beacons-tackle-bluetooth-le-challenges/
you should be a bit more careful with the use of the word “ship”. Qualcomm has not shipped that processor yet have they? They have just announced it.
The amount of marketing speak in that Gimbal announcement was like a punch in the face: “comprehensive CONTEXT aware, PROXIMITY platform for BRANDS to ENGAGE…highly RELEVANT..”
I feel sick.
Absolutely. Fixed. Thanks.
iBeacon is a framework built on top of the Bluetooth 4.0 LE platform, Apple definitely seemed to have the vision to wait out NFC in favor of Bluetooth LE. Since Bluetooth LE is a standard, and not proprietary like Airplay, anymore can jump in and provide “beacons”.
Thanks for posting that, bluecarrot. Interesting.
Interesting how Gimbal is shipping with support for iOS out of the gates, but “with planned support for Android.” Bluetooth LE may be a standard, but Apple’s true vision seems to be in already having the SDK in a shipping OS.
To be fair you need companies like qualcomm creating those beacons for the technology to become popular.
and having bluetooth LE support in their devices since the 4S
My understanding is that Android doesn’t have complete adoption of BTLE standards, so it’s no surprise that all these products are coming out for iOS first.
These prices seem to be the lowest I’ve seen around, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Qualcomm is selling them at at or near cost.
Last night I skimmed through the legal bits of this preorder agreement. IIRC, the one thing that troubled me was that Qualcomm insists they own the hardware they send you – you’re simply granted a license to use the beacons so long as you use Gimbal the way Qualcomm expect you to. To me, as a developer, that doesn’t sound very appealing.
As for the iBeacon angle, I’m not sure the Gimbal beacons have the iBeacon profiles on them – they could be simple BTLE transmit devices that would require you to either use Gimbal or dive into CoreBluetooth APIs.
All in all, I think it’s a good thing that Qualcomm is putting some weight behind BTLE proximity devices. Besides helping bring the price down on the hardware (market pressure), it should help spread the technology adoption… which is a good thing for all of us.
you can get a handful for free as well to play around with. I signed up and requested some. We’ll see what happens.
Qualcomm’s 64bit processors will be used in lower priced devices, too bad that they will probably lack the necessary speed to really benefit from 64bit and will also use only 512MB or 1GB of RAM.
And I don’t mean this in the “64bit SoCs to adress more than 4gigs of RAM in a smartphone?!?!!” way but in the “64bit-software requires more RAM than 32bit-software” way.
It’s clever to start this in the lower priced sector with a higher volume, it’s easier to force developers to consider 64bit versions.
But it’s also stupid, because that sector will not only not benefit from this, but could actually suffer.
They’re wasting RAM in devices that are already at the lower end of RAM size.
Some devices have had it for a while but you probably won’t see it across all of Android due to lower end devices.
To be fair to QCOM, “they” did not label it a marketing gimmick. One guy did, and was quickly shipped off to man a radar station in Alaska. They won’t live this down for a while.
And to those quipping about 64 bit in a low-RAM system: The 64-bit thing is just marketing crap just as it was for Apple. The real story is the advantages that come with an armv8 core. See Mike Ash’s nice overview: http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html
As to the comments about low-end phones? This is not a low-tier chipset but mid-tier. It will still cost a lot less than the flagship chipsets. Think Moto G. (Which phone, BTW, comes with 1 GB of RAM. same as iPhone 5S.)
Hey they copied Apple in that regard! (As in the disparaging of a competing product while they are making it à la playing video on an iPod except qualcomm did it on a super compressed timescale)
I do want to point out that Qualcomm has been working on their Gimbal platform long before any iBeacon announcement. No doubt that their beacon announcement has been inspired by Apple’s efforts, but Qualcomm has been laying the foundations for this project for some time now. So it isn’t as much ripping of iBeacons as it is taking advantage of Apple’s decent Bluetooth support in iOS 7.