Who could have thought a few years back that mobile phones, specifically smartphones, would become so important that the daily lives of people will be characterized by them?! Today, the relationship that people have with their smartphones is borderline obsessive and addictive. The device, of course, is desirable because of its numerous features. A person can take care of almost all of his/her needs, which were previously fulfilled by a computer or laptop, with a smartphone. It is quite obvious that technological advancements have made smartphones a truly revolutionary product.

But, is a smartphone able to perform all it can just by itself? No. Without a Wi-Fi connection, a smartphone is just as good as a regular mobile device. Internet connection has become almost a necessity these days, and a portable electronic communication device needs Wi-Fi to connected to the internet. A Wi-Fi connection is not only useful for the user of the device, but it can also be utilized for data collection, which has become important for businesses, in order to offer enhanced customer services.

It is because of this that the global Wi-Fi analytics market is projected to attain revenue of $52,975.5 million by 2030, increasing from $5,210.0 million in 2019, at a 24.2% CAGR during the forecast period (2020–2030). The technology allows businesses to make use of the information, which is available via the wireless network, for making better and informed decisions regarding a physical space. Devices that are connected to Wi-Fi can be tracked by making use of Wi-Fi analytics.

What Benefits Wi-Fi Analytics Solutions Provide to Businesses?

Enhancing the user experience has become incredibly important for organizations these days, and that has become easier due to the improved capabilities of targeted marketing and access to online behavioral data. Retail stores, restaurants, and sports arenas, among other businesses, are looking for ways to engage and understand the customers and even casual visitors. By making use of Wi-Fi analytics, enterprises can enhance customer experience, predict customer behavior, and remarket their products and services more effectively. Businesses need to keep themselves updated with market and visitor trends, so that they can upgrade their offerings accordingly, and Wi-Fi analytics is now being utilized for these purposes.

What Is Wi-Fi Analytics Used for Exactly?

• Wi-Fi Presence Analytics: With Wi-Fi analytics, organizations are able to study the customer behavior and discover customer personas. With this information, companies can create targeted marketing campaigns, for engaging with customers and ensuring that they keep coming back. When a device enabled with Wi-Fi comes in the range of a company’s access point, several anonymous data points can be captured, which then help in determining the customer behavior.

• Wi-Fi Marketing Analytics: While Wi-Fi presence analytics aids in capturing behavioral data about customers, such as returning and new visitor patterns, traffic patterns, and dwell times, Wi-Fi marketing analytics captures demographic data about customers, including their gender, name, age, and birthday. Furthermore, Wi-Fi marketing analytics also captures digital marketing data, such as the social profiles and email addresses of customers. This data is then utilized for sending personalized messages to customers, to enhance customer retention ratios.

Who Are Making Use of Wi-Fi Analytics Solutions?

The Wi-Fi analytics technology is immensely useful for several businesses, but it is mostly used by the healthcare, smart infrastructure, transportation, retail, sports & entertainment, and hospitality sectors.

The smart infrastructure sector, for example, makes use of this technology for offering insights to the regulatory bodies of cities, primarily regarding how people are navigating the physical spaces and during peak timings. The technology also offers insights about how much time people spend in areas with high traffic. These insights are then used by smart cities for upgrading the citizen engagement procedures and their operations. As urban planners can gain access to traffic heat maps, they are able to strategize innovations in the traffic system more efficiently and plan public transport upgrades accordingly.

Rising Number of Internet Users Driving Adoption of Wi-Fi Analytics in Asia-Pacific (APAC)

In the past, the usage of Wi-Fi analytics had been the highest in North America, as the region has a large number of solution providers, along with the financial stability of the U.S. and Canada. This enables the residents to adopt advanced technologies, such as internet of things and artificial intelligence, early.

The adoption of these solutions, however, has also been increasing in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, and within the region, China is the early adopter of new technologies. The number of smartphone and internet users in the country is extremely high, and in the first quarter of 2020, about 845 million people were using the internet in China. In addition to this, the number of smartphone users is also increasing in India. As per the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India, the number of smartphone users was nearly 468 million in 2017, and it is projected to rise to 859 million by 2022. Because of this growing usage of the internet and smartphones in APAC, the demand for Wi-Fi analytics solutions is increasing as well.

In conclusion, Wi-Fi analytics solutions and services are being extensively adopted for enhancing the customer experience and customer retention across various industries. The surging utilization of smartphones and the internet has paved the way for improved solutions to track customer behavior.

Source: P&S Intelligence  

Author Bio:

Abhishek has around 5+ years of experience in market research and consulting services for ICT & Semiconductor domain. He holds varied experience in market sizing and forecasting with varied models, competition landscape, consumer behavior analysis, opportunity analysis, product/company benchmarking, data mining and others. He has successfully delivered multiple projects on go-to-market strategies, pricing strategy, price point analysis, Business Expansion, market entry and exit, share analysis and others. Prior to joining P&S Intelligence, he worked with different research companies, including Grand View Research Inc., Phronesis Partners: Research & Consulting, and Genpact.

Some of the projects delivered by him include Devops, IoT, automation technologies, Natural language processing, data warehousing, and gamification.