Beakn Mobile, a startup founded by Matt Frazier, was building a Bluetooth beacon-based customer loyalty solution designed specifically for small and medium businesses. Matt Frazier believed SMBs could build meaningful customer loyalty using Bluetooth hardware, but integrating Beacon functionality on iOS presented significant technical barriers. Net Solutions solved the CoreBluetooth challenge and delivered a cross-platform loyalty solution that made in-store merchant demos effortless.
Integrating Bluetooth beacon technology on iOS involved privacy and security constraints that made standard approaches unworkable.
Scanning with CoreBluetooth produced one callback per advertisement packet, creating a reliability problem for beacon detection. Apple’s privacy model required a custom solution that worked within its constraints.
Reading and writing the file system is permitted on Android but restricted on iOS, requiring distinct approaches on each platform. A single-architecture solution was not possible.
Merchants needed to demonstrate the product live with customers during in-store interactions. Any setup complexity would undermine the product’s appeal and adoption rate.
The loyalty program required customer behavior and preference data to generate personalized offers. This data capture had to be subtle, consent-compliant, and easy to manage.
Net Solutions used deep iOS and Android native expertise to design a CoreBluetooth scanning approach that worked within Apple’s privacy model. The Android implementation used the platform’s more open proximity API. The merchant UX was designed for instant demo capability, with no friction between receiving the device and showing it to a customer.
Net Solutions delivered a cross-platform Bluetooth-based loyalty app for iOS and Android.
A custom scanning approach was developed that reliably detected beacons within Apple’s permission framework. The solution worked consistently across iOS versions without triggering privacy restrictions.
Android’s native proximity API was used to implement beacon detection with minimal battery impact. The experience was consistent with iOS despite the architectural differences between platforms.
Merchants had access to customer relationship management tools to view interaction history and loyalty program status. Building and maintaining customer relationships was made simple and accessible.
Customer lifestyle and purchase preference data was captured to support personalized offer generation. Merchants could segment and target their regulars with offers relevant to each individual.
The merchant onboarding experience was designed to be demonstrable live with a customer in a single interaction. Merchants could show the product working in real time with no technical setup required.
Beakn delivered a commercially viable loyalty product for the SMB market.
The app worked consistently across iOS and Android, covering the full range of consumer devices. SMBs could deploy without worrying about which phone their customers carried.
The simplicity of the demo flow made Beakn accessible to merchants with no technical background. A market that typically required expensive hardware and vendor support could now self-deploy.
SMBs gained access to a loyalty program tier that had previously been available only to larger retailers with dedicated infrastructure. The product leveled the playing field for independent businesses.
Net Solutions’ deep iOS and Android native development expertise was the critical factor. The CoreBluetooth challenge had no off-the-shelf solution, and their ability to engineer a reliable answer within Apple’s constraints made Beakn commercially viable.
Consumer-facing IoT products succeed or fail on the quality of their mobile integration and iOS is where most teams hit a wall. Net Solutions has the low-level mobile engineering expertise to solve the Bluetooth and sensor integration challenges that generic development teams can’t. If your product lives at the intersection of hardware and mobile software, let’s talk about getting it right.
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