Report:

Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services

Top Vendor Products for Indoor Location Services in 2024

• AiRISTA
• HID Global
• Juniper Networks
• KINEXON
• Ubisense
• Zebra Technologies

Indoor Location Services Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

• AiRISTA - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Variety of technologies and next-generation BLE AoA infrastructure: AiRISTA supports technologies including passive RFID (900MHz) and NFC for critical asset tracking. Its 5.1 BLE AoA gateways (readers) achieve submeter location accuracy including x/y/z axis information.
  • Asset tag options: AiRISTA has a large variety of asset tags in its portfolio, including the A7, a lower-cost BLE-enabled tag, and the W8, a reusable and recyclable wristband.
  • Low-code developer framework: AiRISTA Flow Studio, a low-code application development framework, allows enterprises to develop customized workflows through a published API and integrate with other applications, such as Internet of Things (IoT) apps.

  Cons:

  • Limited presence beyond target verticals: AiRISTA's presence outside its core markets (healthcare, manufacturing and hospitality) is limited.
  • Potential for vendor lock-in: Two-way communication and full over-the-air capabilities may require the vendor's proprietary asset and people tags.
  • Limited industry strategy: For specific capabilities such as collision avoidance in the manufacturing or distribution center sectors, customers will need to turn to AiRISTA's approved partner solutions or alternative vendors.


• Blueiot - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Richness of BLE offering: Blueiot uses standards-based BLE AoA uplink and downlink tag communications. It leverages existing network infrastructure to communicate to its positioning engine and upstream applications, which eliminates the need for proprietary infrastructure.
  • Cloud-ready open APIs: Blueiot provides a common set of methods and protocols that allow integration of partner or third-party applications.
  • Battery life of tags: Blueiot's tags can operate for three to five years, depending on standby time requirements.

  Cons:

  • Limited ability to track people or critical assets: Blueiot supports only BLE tags, which, because of 2.4GHz absorption, may limit its ability to track people or critical assets.
  • Limited technology integration beyond BLE: According to client inquiries and Gartner research, multiple technologies are needed to meet the use cases identified in the market.
  • Limited sales strategy: Blueiot generates over 50% of its revenue in Asia/Pacific and more than 28% in EMEA. Prospective customers must ensure that sales operations and support are available in their geographies.


• CenTrak - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Flexibility of offering: CenTrak can use either Wi-Fi/BLE, which utilizes the existing network infrastructure, or its proprietary active UHF underlay, which provides extended battery life and faster location updates. Both can use CenTrak's Gen2IR, an infrared solution that provides room-level or better zones.
  • Vertical market scalability: For staff duress situations, CenTrak's Connect Pulse service provides a low-latency response with the ability to scale to over 10,000 devices. CenTrak can deploy location services to markets other than healthcare via partners.
  • Integration capabilities: CenTrak offers good integration with leading partners in the industry, such as HID Global, Cisco Systems and Hitachi, via a new cloud-to-cloud approach.

  Cons:

  • Limited vertical focus: Enterprises deploying solutions outside CenTrak's target markets (for example, in manufacturing) may have to look for different solutions.
  • Proprietary overlay network: The UHF overlay infrastructure option adds cost to the overall solution.
  • Limited presence in Asia/Pacific: Ninety percent of CenTrak's revenue comes from the Americas and EMEA. Prospective customers must ensure that sales operations and support are available in their geographies.


• Cisco Systems - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Device/sensor marketplace: Cisco offers a choice of more than 50 preintegrated Wi-Fi, BLE and wired devices. Cisco Spaces enables customers to onboard, manage and monitor their devices through one centralized location to avoid managing multiple solutions.
  • Extensibility: Cisco Spaces Connector supports Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX), and Meraki and Webex connectivity, and provides a scalable and flexible cloud-managed connectivity option.
  • Pricing flexibility: In addition to licensing based on the number of devices, customers can subscribe to a Cisco Spaces Unlimited license on a per-square-foot basis. Cisco also offers a consumer industry license and an operations license for IoT and advanced Wi-Fi location services.

  Cons:

  • Marketing strategy: Cisco is shifting its marketing focus toward facilities/real-estate managers, which means that its messaging (for Smart Workspaces, for example) for facilities buyers will differ from that used for its historical line of business.
  • Limited ability to track people or critical assets: Cisco supports third-party Wi-Fi tags and BLE tags, which provide only 5-meter accuracy to track people or critical assets.
  • Product strategy: For location services, Cisco has more than five offerings with differing licensing and functionality, which is confusing to customers. Some functionality is included in required licenses, while other capabilities require updated applications.


• HID Global - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Overall viability: HID Global has continued to expand the diversity of its solutions in the indoor location market with the acquisitions of GuardRFID and Connexient. These extend its installed base into the healthcare and manufacturing vertical markets.
  • Flexibility via active and passive technologies: Complex use cases require the ability to provide active and passive solutions. The acquisition of GuardRFID provides a 433MHz solution, as well as an expanded tag portfolio to address the specific requirements of healthcare use cases such as employee duress and infant management.
  • Geographical diversity: As part of ASSA ABLOY, HID Global is able to deploy to a global client base.

  Cons:

  • Limited integration of acquired systems: HID Global has completed multiple acquisitions and is working to integrate the resulting separate solutions into a single product. Today, however, they still operate largely as stand-alone solutions.
  • Partner expertise: Partners of companies that have been acquired by HID Global may not have the knowledge or ability to support all the technologies that HID Global offers. This shortcoming might increase project costs and limit technology options.
  • Inconsistent pricing strategy: As HID Global continues to consolidate its acquisitions, product offerings will vary, moving from perpetual licensing to subscription licensing.


• Huawei Technologies - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Flexibility of offering: For enterprises considering Huawei as an infrastructure solution provider, its offering has the flexibility to embed PCI boards into access points and to use dongles to gather UWB, Zigbee, Thread and RFID data.
  • No requirement for anchors or additional management or security applications: Because Huawei's Location Service is built on its existing infrastructure, it does not need a separate management or security application.
  • Integration capabilities: Huawei offers good integration with many location tag and vertical market application partners in China.

  Cons:

  • Vendor lock-in: Huawei's location solution requires its proprietary infrastructure, which potentially locks customers into the offering.
  • Focus of market messaging: Huawei's location market messaging has been limited, but much of what there has been has focused on outdoor location, specifically using global navigation satellite system (GNSS) technology.
  • Geographic strategy: The majority of Huawei's location deployments are in Asia/Pacific. Enterprises in Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa must ensure that sales operations and support are available in their geographies.


• Inpixon - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Platform approach: Inpixon offers the flexibility to collect data from multiple technologies, along with the ability to address granular and long-range location requirements in industrial as well as line-of-business use cases. The data collection methods can also be combined within a single use case.
  • Tag options: Inpixon demonstrates innovation by providing multiple tags, from disposable patient wristbands to asset tags to industrial IP68 tags, to address the needs of the manufacturing and healthcare sectors.
  • Position in targeted vertical markets: Inpixon has a strong presence and strong brand recognition in public sector/government markets. It has also grown significantly in industrial markets with Industry 4.0 solutions and integrations with ecosystem partners like SAP.

  Cons:

  • Two different location solutions: Inpixon has two different offerings (IntraNav and Aware) with differing value propositions, which customers may find confusing.
  • Limited brand awareness: Partly due to its acquisition of multiple companies and brands, Inpixon struggles with name recognition beyond public sector and government markets. Enterprises may not be aware of Inpixon's capabilities outside its target markets and geographies.
  • Limited geographical market strategy: Eighty-five percent of Inpixon's sales are made in the Americas and EMEA. Enterprises should confirm the availability of sales operations and support in their region of the world.


• Juniper Networks - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Open architecture: Juniper's indoor location platform has an open, programmable architecture, enabling scalability and open APIs for integration with ecosystem partners. Juniper can address a much wider set of location scenarios via important integration partners, including Zebra Technologies and Securitas.
  • Support for multiple technologies: Users can choose from a variety of technologies and combinations. These range from BLE with unsupervised ML in the cloud, and sensor fusion in a mobile SDK (including virtual beacons for push notifications), to UWB and computer vision systems (through technology integrations), depending on the use-case requirements.
  • Ease of deployment: Juniper delivers autoplacement/auto-orientation algorithms for its Juniper Mist Access Points. This accelerates deployment for single- and multifloor deployments in environments like retail shops, corporate office space, places of education and airports.

  Cons:

  • Vendor lock-in: Deployment of the Juniper Mist indoor location solution requires Juniper Mist Access Points to deliver location services, complementary Wi-Fi client access services and cloud subscription licenses, which lock customers into a single infrastructure vendor.
  • No tags provided by vendor: Juniper's product offering does not include its own asset tags, which makes it wholly reliant on ecosystem partners for asset visibility use cases.
  • Limited vertical markets: The Juniper Mist solution is widely deployed across corporate offices, healthcare, retail and other industries, but Juniper has less experience in manufacturing environments, for which it leverages technology partnerships.


• KINEXON - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Analytics and process optimization: In addition to real-time tracking capabilities, KINEXON OS provides three no-code analytics modules: process modeling, process mining and process monitoring. These are designed to identify bottlenecks and perform process optimization in the manufacturing and logistics sectors.
  • Hardware innovation: KINEXON's platform integrates with the KINEXON e-paper tag that enables UWB-based localization and, at the same time, automated documentation of material flow and order management. The programmable display can also be used for quality control processes and can lead to a significant reduction in paper usage.
  • Open system approach: KINEXON OS can process location information from a variety of technologies, which provides a high degree of flexibility for clients. KINEXON can provide centimeter-level accuracy with millisecond latency with its X-Tag, or presence detection at a lower beacon rate, depending on client needs.

  Cons:

  • Potential for vendor hardware lock-in: Although third-party solutions and hardware such as asset tags are interoperable with KINEXON's platform, KINEXON's UWB-based hardware runs best with its proprietary tags to provide granular positioning and scalability.
  • Limited industry strategy: KINEXON's presence outside its core markets (manufacturing, transportation, logistics and professional sports) is limited.
  • Limited sales strategy: With 84% of KINEXON's business coming from North America and EMEA, enterprises should confirm the availability of sales operations and support in their geographies.


• Kontakt.io - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Flexibility of location sensors: Kontakt.io's portal beam data collection sensor has the ability to collect BLE and IrDA location data. It also serves as a PIR sensor and has a thermal camera for measuring occupancy. All devices, gateways and sensors also provide BLE beaconing for mobile wayfinding. The product family also includes Beam Mini and Anchor Beacon 2 devices for added sensor flexibility.
  • Ecosystem partners: Kontakt.io has a large ecosystem of tag, device and sensor partners, as well as over 1,200 software vendor partners to address different vertical market applications.
  • Flexibility of migration strategy: The flexibility of Kontakt.io's solutions allows the ingestion of competitive BLE location data, which enables leverage of existing installations and provides a migration strategy.

  Cons:

  • Limited marketing communication voice in the market: Kontakt.io is not often mentioned by Gartner clients inquiring about end-to-end indoor location solutions. Enterprises outside its target markets and geographies may not be aware of its capabilities.
  • Need for multiple sources for granularity: To address enterprise requirements for granular location, Kontakt.io's solution may require a portal to provide supplemental data.
  • Availability in Asia/Pacific: Kontakt.io generates 92% of its revenue in the Americas and EMEA. Enterprises should confirm that sales and support are available in their geographies.


• Litum - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Rechargeable tags: Litum's new-generation location tags are rechargeable, which eliminates the need to change batteries. They can also receive over-the-air remote firmware updates, eliminating the need to update each tag individually.
  • Mesh networking for installation flexibility: The underlay's mesh-based nodes are AC-powered, with battery backup. They do not require wired connectivity, a feature that opens up new use cases.
  • Enhanced employee safety: With tag-to-tag detection and a forklift collision warning system, Litum's solution can address employee safety and compliance challenges in its target markets.

  Cons:

  • Limited marketing communication voice in the market: Litum is not often mentioned by users of Gartner's client inquiry service. Enterprises outside Litum's target markets and geographies may not be aware of its capabilities.
  • Lack of z-axis location: Location tags can provide x and y coordinates but cannot provide z-axis (height) information, which may be needed for industrial applications.
  • Limited sales channel presence: With over 60% of Litum's sales occurring in the Americas, enterprises should confirm the availability of sales operations and support in their region.


• Midmark - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Customer experience: Midmark's customer success team and project management focus provide a highly rated customer experience as rated by its customers.
  • Focus on human safety: Midmark's BLE and IR badge deployment option addresses staff duress requirements and provides operational efficiency by incorporating nurse call communications.
  • Flexibility of product strategy: Midmark uses a combination of its own proprietary components and third-party technology such as Cisco Spaces to provide flexible deployment options.

  Cons:

  • Complexity of underlay architecture: The use of concentrators, gateways and Cat 3 UDF wiring in Midmark's wired IR sensory network creates a Midmark-specific underlay of additional components that must be managed and that may require a separate security policy.
  • Focus on healthcare: Midmark focuses solely on the healthcare sector. Enterprises in other sectors must look to other vendors.
  • Availability outside the Americas: Midmark's sales are concentrated in North America. Its product is not widely distributed in European and Asian markets.


• Purple - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Computer vision capabilities: Purple's computer-vision-based capabilities can track mobile assets (and people) along their path (via image "stitching"), and identify bottlenecks or other issues along the way. This technology extends to safety use cases, such as fall detection, for which it can trigger alerts.
  • Technology- and hardware-agnosticism: Purple is a software-only company. Its location engine uses partners for asset tags, people tags, sensors and Wi-Fi infrastructure (if needed).
  • Asset tracking and wayfinding integration: Purple's wayfinding and asset-tracking capabilities are tightly integrated, enabling users to locate assets and then navigate toward them.

  Cons:

  • Lack of end-to-end offering: Purple is primarily a software vendor that is reliant on OEMs for tags, readers and other potential infrastructure components.
  • Staff duress offering: Purple has multiple implementations that may not address latency requirements for emergencies.
  • Limited voice in the market: Purple's platform is largely deployed in the Americas. Enterprises may not be aware of its capabilities outside its target markets and geographies.


• Securitas - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • End-to-end RTLS offering for healthcare: Securitas addresses a wide range of use cases when it comes to people and asset tracking for the healthcare industry. Use cases include infant protection, elder-care wander management, patient tracking, staff tracking, and asset location and security. Tag options provide motion, temperature, differential pressure and humidity-monitoring capabilities, as well as location data.
  • Partner ecosystem: Securitas has a large catalog of partners for technologies such as nurse call systems, building automation systems and asset management systems. It also supports third-party BLE from partners such as Cisco Systems and HPE Aruba Networking.
  • After-sales support: Securitas provides 24/7 technical support by phone. It has a dedicated customer success team that provides guidance on how to run and manage an RTLS.

  Cons:

  • Limited cloud capabilities: Securitas takes a cloud or hybrid cloud approach, but only some of its applications are cloud-based.
  • Limited use cases: For use cases beyond Securitas' primary focus on healthcare, such as collision avoidance, enterprises may have to look to other vendors.
  • Healthcare focus: The Securitas sales team focuses only on the healthcare sector, with all other verticals addressed via resellers. Therefore, prospective customers outside the healthcare sector must ensure that these resellers provide service for their industry and geography.


• Trio Mobil - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Scalability and innovativeness of architecture: Trio Mobil's AI-powered IoT platform combines with TRUE-AI computer vision to address complex industrial use cases such as smart geofencing.
  • Forklift safety and collision avoidance system: This system integrates directly into the vehicle and can adjust the forklift's speed without driver intervention, depending on implemented business rules.
  • Third-party integration: The communication method used by Trio Mobil's tags is proprietary, but location data can be shared with third-party tools and applications via APIs.

  Cons:

  • Product complexity: Trio Mobil's UWB and BLE indoor location service solutions are separate, with differing components.
  • Lack of z-axis location data: Trio Mobil's location tags can provide x and y coordinates but cannot provide z-axis (height) information, which may be needed for industrial applications.
  • Limited marketing communication voice in the market: Trio Mobil's marketing emphasis is on the intralogistics operations sector. Consequently, enterprises may not be aware of its abilities in other sectors.


• Ubisense - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Separation of business into solutions and platform: Ubisense's solutions business provides turnkey end-to-end solutions. At the same time its platform allows strategic partners and resellers to deploy value-added applications that extend into new markets.
  • Technology investment: Ubisense has invested in expanding the flexibility of its tag offering, which now enables tags to be used with HPE Aruba Networking access points, provides more hybrid technology options, integrates GNSS technology into tags and provides an e-paper tag.
  • Multitechnology capability and integration: Ubisense has installations combining several technologies, such as BLE and UWB, to address different use cases and requirements.

  Cons:

  • Limited marketing communication voice in the market: As Ubisense is a relatively small vendor that focuses on specific verticals, enterprises may not be aware of its capabilities outside its target markets and geographies.
  • Potential for improved accuracy to increase cost: Some high-accuracy deployments may require a mesh underlay, which adds to the cost of the overall deployment.
  • Focused sales presence: With 80% of Ubisense sales occurring in the Americas and EMEA, enterprises should confirm the availability of sales operations and support in their region of the world.


• Wiliot - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Product strategy: Wiliot's innovative and disruptive technology enables new types of large-scale, real-time active tracking and sensing at very low prices — tags currently cost from 30 cents to 10 cents per unit in volume. Its platform is scalable to millions of tracked items per customer.
  • Technology and channel development: Wiliot has a strong roadmap both for technology innovation and development of its partner program.
  • Use of standards: Wiliot works with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the IEEE and 3GPP to standardize some elements of its technology and communication protocols in order to lower tag costs and accelerate adoption of active tag solutions.

  Cons:

  • Limited scalability: Customers may have to work with partners to access the tags, infrastructure and application software. Wiliot's current focus is on direct sales and consulting for a few large clients in industries such as retail and distribution.
  • Focused product offering: Wiliot's very limited range of tag types and cloud-based as-a-service pricing will not suit every business case or technological need. As a result, customers may need to purchase other products to get a total location solution.
  • Sales presence: Alliances and distributor/partner sales are mainly available in the U.S. and Europe. Prospective customers should confirm the availability of sales operations and support in their region.


• Zebra Technologies - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Industry knowledge: Zebra has extensive experience of developing new solutions and of integrating technologies that it has acquired.
  • Cloud-ready APIs: Zebra provides a common set of methods and protocols to use across heterogeneous edge devices, thus enabling cross-compatibility with its edge location sensors.
  • Data-driven, agile platform: Zebra offers one of the most inclusive tracking platforms, which allows enterprises to select technology based on their business needs.

  Cons:

  • Limited application partner ecosystem: Zebra's MotionWorks Enterprise platform has only a limited number of indoor location ecosystem application partners in its target markets.
  • Limited sales channel presence: The majority of Zebra's MotionWorks Enterprise sales are made in the Americas and EMEA. Enterprises should confirm the availability of sales operations and support in their regions.
  • Pricing strategy: Gartner clients often tell us in inquiry sessions that Zebra's pricing for MotionWorks Enterprise is higher than that for other vendors' products in this market.

Reference

• Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services, 28 February 2024, ID G00788620

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