ABI Research predicted that the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacon market will more than double in 2016 and remains on track to break 400 million shipments by 2021. The research company noted that while retail is the main focus for many today, this will likely be overtaken in terms of shipments by corporate/industrial, connected home and IoT as the market moves from hardware to software-based beacons. It also said the dedicated beacon advertising market will grow strongly, but collaboration and aggregation of networks will also be a developing trend in 2016. Report