An ambient IoT company, Wiliot designs semiconductors that provide battery-free power bluetooth® tags to enable real-time awareness for everything using these stamp-sized computers – from production to distribution to use – for a world of minimal waste, complete confidence and perfectly timed world. Wiliot’s innovations are being used to combat climate change and revolutionize supply and supply chains.
I recently spoke with Steve Statler, SVP of Marketing & ESG for Wiliot, about how they are using Bluetooth technology to support ambient IoT technologies.
Q&A with Steve Statler of Wiliot
Which 2022 Bluetooth technology trends will stick with you the most?
“We are on a path where the number of Bluetooth® devices can scale to trillions of everyday things.
2022 is the year in which the first Bluetooth® Ambient IoT technology from Wiliot started on its way to massive IoT volumes. Ambient IoT is a progression from the early days of IoT that focused on connecting expensive things like appliances and cars to an IoT where things are the everyday objects that surround us: packaging for food, medicine, clothing and even furniture. We are on a path where the number of Bluetooth devices can be scaled to trillions of everyday things, with IoT connectivity for medicines, food containers, clothing, documents, machine parts, furniture and tools.
We enabled a clothing store with 50,000 stamp-sized Bluetooth radios attached to clothing, providing real-time visibility of where items are in the store without the need for manual tapping or scanning. This enables retailers to thrive in a world where they need to be able to fulfill online orders while providing better service with less staff from a smaller store.
Our innovations also support farm-to-store cold chain visibility, extending days to produce to deliver better quality fruits and vegetables with less waste and a lower carbon footprint.
What has Wiliot focused on in 2022?
We’ve launched an ambient IoT starter kit that makes innovation with ambient IoT affordable, enabling a wide range of partners, developers and innovators to experiment and learn while helping some of the largest retail companies prepare for large-scale deployment.
What was the biggest demand for Bluetooth technology from your customers in 2022?
“Real-time tracking and detection of inventory locations is becoming key to survival in a retail environment.”
The real-time tracking and detection of stock locations becomes key to survival in a retail environment that has been permanently altered by COVID-19 and competition from Amazon. Customers expect to be able to buy online and pick up in store or have it delivered to their home. To compete with Amazon, retailers must fulfill these orders from their most valuable and expensive asset, their stores. bluetooth® ambient IoT technology provides the real-time visibility retailers need to thrive in an omnichannel world. This allows staff to spend more time interacting with customers rather than searching for products.
What new trends do you expect to see for Bluetooth technology in 2023?
Ambient IoT technology will scale rapidly and become a substantial part of the total Bluetooth volume® sales of devices in 2023. We expect 2023 to be a transition from pilots to production projects for large-scale Bluetooth ambient IoT.