Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Philips Lighting (Euronext Amsterdam ticker: LIGHT), a global leader in lighting, today announced its Location Lab partner program, comprised of companies developing innovative applications for its highly accurate indoor positioning system. The Location Lab partner program enables collaboration with industry leaders and start-ups to explore novel uses of the Philips’ indoor positioning system that appeal to innovation leaders in retail, malls, offices and other industries. First partners to join include leaders in IT and system integration such as SAP¹, Microsoft, and Capgemini, strategic enterprise technology advisors and market leaders in handheld computers and electronic shelf labels such as Zebra Technologies and SES-imagotag, location based service software providers such as Favendo, Adactive, Vipera, Nakko and Mapiq, and parties active in robotics such as Blue Jay.

“Our Location Lab partners are as important to us as apps to a smartphone; the value a building owner derives from our indoor positioning system increases with the number of complementary products and services we offer. With our partners we are able to turn our customers’ vision into reality and enable them to differentiate through shopper convenience and staff efficiency,” said Parik Chopra, Segment Leader Retail and Hospitality for Philips Lighting. “The market for indoor positioning is forecasted to triple by 2020, to over 1 million installations². Together with our Location Lab partners we are looking forward to offer scalable systems that fulfill the needs of this growing market.” 

The announcement of the Location Lab partner program builds on Philips Lighting’s previously announced partnership with product mapping and search provider Aisle411 and the YellowDot program to open the technology to other lighting OEMs. Partners in the Location Lab program get access to Philips’ indoor positioning software development kit and an evaluation kit comprised of indoor positioning LED lights. This allows them to easily gain familiarity with the indoor positioning technology and explore innovative use cases.

Philips Lighting utilizes a combination of its Visible Light Communication technology, Bluetooth, and the smartphone’s inertial sensors to deliver an indoor positioning system that offers 30 cm accuracy plus orientation, in-pocket notifications, and analytics. Visible Light Communication works by individual light points transmitting their location through modulation of light that can be detected by a smart phone camera but not by the human eye. The data stream is one-way and no personal data is collected by the lighting system. 

Visit the indoor positioning showcase at:

• Mobile World Congress: 27 February – 02 March in Barcelona, Spain [booth 8.0E09, hall 8.0] with partners Aisle411 and Mapiq at the Philips Lighting booth. To attend Philips Lighting speaker session “Lights, Location, Magic; the Power of Location Based Apps”, please sign up here. 
• Lighting Fair Japan: 07-10 March in Tokyo, Japan [LF1058], with partner Adactive.
• EuroShop, Europe’s leading retail fair: 05-09 March in Duesseldorf, Germany: demonstrations of the above mentioned novel uses will be shown by Philips Lighting [booth B40, hall 9], SAP [booth G45, hall 6], and Microsoft [booth G42, hall 6]. 

¹ SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

² Source: ABI Research Report, Indoor location in retail: where is the money? September, 2016.

Notes to Editors

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The Philips patented indoor positioning system does not read information on a shopper’s smartphone and no shopper data is acquired or stored by the lighting system. Each light fixture transmits a one-way stream of digital information using Visible Light Communication (VLC). This one-way data stream is undetectable to the human eye but is picked up by the camera on the smartphone. The shopper opts into the service by downloading the retailer’s app. The coded location information is used by the app to provide location-based services. The shopper can turn off the app at any time. www.philips.com/indoorpositioning