Reading through the quarterly Bluetooth SIG Magazine I came across a couple of interesting articles, but I'll discuss my views on each separately. There is an article summing up the use of bluetooth proximity marketing in India today, which I thought I had to share with you:

Stroll around Bangalore’s swanky The Forum Mall with your Bluetooth enabled phone in discoverable mode, and you’ll soon begin receiving promotional messages from the stores in the mall, one of 12 across India that have deployed Bluetooth enabled servers to reach out to customers in a personalized way.

If multinational brands such as Levi’s, adidas and Pepsi, among others, are experimenting with Bluetooth technology to get closer to their customers, so too is the Bangalore Traffic Police. Officers now carry handsets that communicate with a central information server to instantly recall a traffic offender’s past record; a Bluetooth enabled printer can issue tickets on the spot.

Other applications are quickly catching on. For instance, Bangalore-based Motvik Technologies launched wwigo (Webcam Wherever I Go) in June 2008. The solution, pronounced “vigo,” turns a Bluetooth enabled camera phone into a mobile, wireless webcam. And Phoneytunes, a mobile services company, has deployed Bluetooth enabled kiosks at 38 Sony Ericsson retail outlets across the country to allow users to download ringtones, wallpapers and songs.

It is pretty impressive to see that the bluetooth technology is becoming so widely used and adopted throughout all of India, across different sectors, such that it has also been adopted by the traffic police. But this is a natural side-effect of the growing number of bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, and Bluetooth SIG figures come to back this up:

Among Indian consumers, Bluetooth enabled wireless headsets are becoming increasingly popular, thanks to lower prices and surging sales of mobile handsets. An estimated 7 million to 8 million mobile phones – 70 percent of which are Bluetooth enabled – are sold each month in India, which has a subscriber base of 250 million.

The Indian automotive market represents an exciting growth area, with more middle-class Indians buying cars today – even more than one per household – to accommodate the needs of working couples. While Bluetooth technology’s main automotive applications are hands-free calling and “infotainment” devices, it won’t be long before we see vehicle safety, navigation, tracking, telematics and control, according to Anant Koppar, chairman and CEO of KTwo Technology Solutions.

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In another market segment, the scarcity of medical facilities and doctors in densely-populated India is expected to encourage the use of Bluetooth enabled medical, health and fitness devices. For instance, a wearable Bluetooth enabled heart monitor that can send text messages to local hospitals has been successfully tested at the Sathyabama University in Tamil Nadu.

India sounds like a very promising market for bluetooth proximity marketing so I am sure we are bound to hear more about new proximity marketing campaigns there. I look forward to it!