In its quarterly financials, Philips mentioned a project that it had undertaken in Q2 with Carrefour in Lille, France. Carrefour, a major French supermarket, has installed 2.5 kilometre (800 linear units) of LED light fixtures that transmit location data to customers’ smartphones and is detected by the camera. Carrefour has an app (Promo C’ou) that can detect the location and guide consumers to the part of the shop (which is 7,800m² in area) where special offers and promotions can be found.
Here is a video of the project.
Analyst Comment
Philips calls this technology VLC (Visible Light Communication) and the company is offering it as an alternative to other technologies such as Beacons. Others call it Li-Fi and we ran a feature on the concept in March (Li-Fi is not a Misprint…). As mentioned there, part of the reason we are keeping an eye on this technology is that, some years ago, Samsung showed a demonstration of the same technique being used in the LEDs in a public display backlight, although we have seen nothing in this area for a while. (BR)
