Benefits of the Bluetooth Electronic
Shelf Label StandardBluetooth ESL規格がもたらす数々のメリット

The Bluetooth Electronic Shelf Label Standard

In early 2023, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the release of the new wireless standard for the ESL market. The intention was to create a scalable, low-power, secure ESL standard that can enable the ESL market to reach its full potential. The Bluetooth^® ESL standard leverages key new feature enhancements introduced in Bluetooth Core Specification Version 5.4, including Periodic Advertising with Responses (PAwR) and Encrypted Advertising Data, to deliver secure and scalable ESL deployments required by the ESL market. Most importantly, the Bluetooth SIG also released ESL Profile and Service specifications.

These were developed by the ESL Working Group, consisting of leading ESL vendors and enabling technology suppliers, and will standardize the process for message transmission between access points and ESLs. These initiatives, demanded by many retailers looking to deploy ESL technology, will enable standardized, interoperable ESL products that use Bluetooth^® technology to be created, removing a fundamental obstacle to adoption which has plagued the industry to date.

Benefits of the Bluetooth ESL standard

With the introduction of a wireless standard for the ESL market, Bluetooth^® technology will help unlock the next chapter for in-store digital transformation to deliver better outcomes for stores and shoppers. The arrival of the Bluetooth^® ESL standard has the potential to bring a number of benefits, including:

Increased Interoperability – One of the major benefits of adopting the Bluetooth^® ESL standard is that it gives retailers the flexibility and choice to buy products and solutions from one vendor knowing that they will work with those from another. This allows them to tailor the solution to their specific needs and gives them the ability to choose their preferred supplier without losing out on potential innovations from other vendors.

Flexibility and Reduced Vendor Lock-In – Retailers who adopt solutions based on the Bluetooth^® ESL standard can switch to a different vendor if their current solution provider falls behind on their promises or starts to lag behind the competition, avoiding the need to commit to a single-vendor ecosystem or deploy an entirely new infrastructure.

Furthermore, as retailers increasingly deploy other smart retail technologies – including wireless sensors, lighting controls, and beacon infrastructure – this can minimize friction in enabling an interconnected smart retail ecosystem and offer greater flexibility in choosing complementary product offerings that can provide additional benefits and ROI beyond a single use case. Retailers will also have greater flexibility to choose their optimal ESL and infrastructure providers rather than being limited to vendors who are compatible with a specific proprietary solution.

Economies of Scale – Retailers can also benefit from the enormous economies of scale that Bluetooth^® technology can rely on. The Bluetooth ESL standard is likely to enable a much wider number of Bluetooth chipset and ESL solution providers to address the market, while Bluetooth chipset solutions and reference designs specifically addressing the requirements of the ESL market are likely to emerge. This will enable greater product choice, increased competition, a larger supply of products and wireless chipsets, global availability, a reduced burden of entry, faster time to market, and collaboration from a wide number of players across the value chain.

Innovation and Competition – While the ESL landscape has been dominated by proprietary solutions, the availability of the Bluetooth^® ESL standard will help solution providers enter the market. This democratization and increased competition within the ESL market could lead to much faster innovation via new features and product differentiation, reductions in cost via additional competition, increased awareness in the overall ESL market, and greater adoption within different regions.

Long-Term Product Evolution – Various industry stakeholders across the smart retail value chain will continue to work together within the Bluetooth^® ESL Working Group to identify the primary requirements of the industry and help develop strong collaborative solutions. This will also lead to increased competition and will give retailers the flexibility to choose which suppliers best fit their specific requirements. Underlying standards will also help shift the focus towards value-added features rather than core functionality, spurring additional innovation, all the while guaranteeing interoperability.

Future-Proofing – For retailers, there has been some hesitation in deploying solutions due to the promise of something better in the future. By leveraging standards-based solutions, such as Bluetooth^® technology, vendors have more visibility on the technology roadmap, including performance and features that can be upgraded over time as various innovators contribute to the publicly available specifications. Future-proof standards-based infrastructures will lay the foundation for additional retail problems to be solved and for new services to be created over time, unlocking further value and ROI.

High Scalability – Though the current ESL market is dominated by proprietary technologies, the market is seeing strong growth and existing solution providers offer very compelling ESL product portfolios. However, serving the addressable market of tens of billions of shelf labels globally is unlikely to be achieved if retailer choices are tied to the product portfolios of a few proprietary vendors. Retailers across the globe could be at the mercy of a single supplier’s proprietary technology and the fortunes of a single company. Any disruptions faced in their supply chain could negatively impact planned rollouts. In contrast, by standardizing ESLs using Bluetooth^® technology, retailers can benefit from the huge number of Bluetooth vendors, chipset suppliers, software developers, system integrators, and other industry players that continue to grow and evolve.

Streamlined Deployment – Most enterprise Wi-Fi access points already include embedded standards-based IoT technologies, such as Bluetooth^® technology. Therefore, deploying ESLs with Bluetooth technology as the wireless networking technology will require minimal additional investment into dedicated ESL infrastructure, reducing the cost and complexity of deployment. This contrasts with proprietary technologies, which have traditionally required a discrete network of transceivers in addition to the wireless AP to deploy the ESL network (though some have partnered directly with AP vendors).

Multi-Use Infrastructure – By leveraging Bluetooth^® technology, not only can the infrastructure be used to enable ESLs, but the same infrastructure can accommodate multiple additional Bluetooth^® use cases, including wireless sensor networks, beacons and proximity services, asset and personnel tracking, POS connectivity, and lighting and building controls, among many others. This can drastically increase the value of a smart retail deployment’s ROI while minimizing the cost and complexity of managing multiple use cases.

To learn more, read the full report: How the Bluetooth^® Electronic Shelf Label Standard Will Impact the Smart Retail Market. This report explores how the recent arrival of the new Bluetooth ESL standard will help create an interoperable ESL ecosystem. 

Read the full report.