Qualcomm Announces Gimbal Proximity Beacons to Compete With iBeacons [Video]

Qualcomm has announced the availability of its Gimbal Proximity Beacons to compete with Apple's iBeacons. Gimbal proximity beacons, available in two models, are accurate down to one foot and work indoors and outdoors.

Gimbal is a comprehensive context aware, proximity platform for brands to engage their customers’ mobile devices with highly relevant communications using a powerful combination of physical location, activity, time and personal interests. Gimbal helps increase the relevance of content delivered to end users’ devices, filtering out the irrelevant and offering more personalized experiences, thereby allowing retailers, venues, content providers and developers to send personalized high-value content to enhance their users’ mobile devices. The overall Gimbal context aware platform supports iOS and Android; while the new Gimbal proximity beacons support iOS today with planned support for Android.

“With the availability of Gimbal proximity beacons, we are empowering brands to take mobile engagement with their customers to a whole new level through micro-location,” said Rocco Fabiano, president of Qualcomm Retail Solutions. “Gimbal – with its proximity beacons that use low-energy Bluetooth Smart – is the complete package. Given the affordable pricing of the beacons, retailers and venue operators can install a network for customer engagement that is both more accurate and less expensive than other location-based systems.”


The Gimbal platform features two proximity beacon models to address a wide range of use cases: the Series 20 (95mm x 102mm x 24mm) and the Series 10 (28mm x 40mm x 5.6mm). Companies that deploy the Gimbal platform can manage Gimbal beacons using Gimbal Manager. The beacons communicate over Bluetooth Smart for long battery life. Depending on the use cases, Series 10 beacons have a battery life of many months or up to a year; Series 20 beacons have a battery life of 1-3 years. The beacons also can be configured to longer transmission intervals, for a battery life of up to several years.

Depending on volume, Series 10 beacons are available for as little as $5 each and Series 20 beacons are available for as little as $10 each.