The RAIN Alliance recently launched an initiative where it will oversee the standardisation of integrating RAIN reader capabilities into smartphones. Much like the NFC Forum’s NFC technology has become ubiquitous and is most commonly used for contactless payments, the RAIN Alliance is seeking to bring the technology’s functionality into devices everywhere.
Dr Paul Muller, who was hired to head the initiative, told IoT Insider that the initiative was about taking RAIN adoption “to the next level”.
“The objective is to take RAIN technology to the next level and enable new use cases, [and] enable the next wave of adoption,” said Dr Muller. “RAIN is the most widely-deployed wireless endpoint technology out there. We shipped more than 50 billion tags into the market last year and [the] standardisation of RAIN reader integration into smartphones is essential.”
Dr Muller’s experience of working in the semiconductor and wireless space for the last 20 years, which involved working with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular connectivity, means he is well-positioned to spearhead this initiative. He began working with RAIN technology in 2015 when he joined EM Microelectronic.
RAIN is a technology that dates back to the early noughties, with Muller citing Marks & Spencer as one of the first retailers to deploy the technology. What has changed for RAIN in that time?
“Fundamentally, there’s been an evolution,” he said. “In the early days, people were focused on technology and performance; how to get this to work. Today, while talking to retailers and other end users, the discussions are about return on investment.” In other words, the conversations around RAIN have shifted from proving the viability of the technology, to understanding more specifically how RAIN will benefit your specific use case.
An undesirable scenario for the Alliance would be for a user to figure out how to use the RAIN functionality on their smartphone. “It has to be a seamless user experience out of the box,” stressed Dr Muller. “That’s why we’ve set up these … two new work groups in the Alliance in order to define what the key use cases are and the user experiences we would like to see.”
Another undesirable scenario would be for this functionality to be accessed by some users, but not all, based on the smartphone they own. “That won’t foster adoption,” he said. “We will foster adoption if it’s intuitive, if it’s easy to use, and if … each of you can use your smartphone and get the same results.”
What RAIN integration could look like
So what does RAIN reader integration into smartphones look like for the end user? Well, Dr Muller said that this could manifest in a number of different ways – hypothetically speaking, as the initiative is newly launched and the Alliance are at the beginning of their journey.
Using the example of retail, currently store employees can check store inventory – for example, checking if a medium-sized yellow t-shirt is in stock – using a RAIN reader. But with this functionality integrated into smartphones, a customer could do this themselves.
“It would allow you to have this frictionless shopping experience,” explained Dr Muller, harking back to the emphasis being placed on customer experience.
“We can go into the industrial sector where we can talk about tool rental models, for example,” Dr Muller added. “The one I keep returning to is … looking for library books that my kids had to bring back to school the next day … I would have to scour through books in my house … those library books already carry RAIN tags. So if I had a RAIN reader in my smartphone I could find those books in 20, 30 minutes rather than spending two or three hours.”
The strength of RAIN, Dr Muller noted, is the existing infrastructure in place. Plenty of retailers have adopted it for their own purposes, which means lots of items carry RAIN tags. This ultimately means there doesn’t need to be additional costs associated with RAIN reader integration in smartphones.
It’s also being presented as a technology with the capabilities to support Digital Product Passport (DPP), an incoming EU initiative which will require products sold in the EU to have information on their supply chain, so that customers that are environmentally-conscious – for example, wanting to know if a product has been created as sustainably as possibly – have the information with which to make their purchasing decisions.
“A smartphone is an obvious way for a consumer to get that product information,” said Dr Muller. “Once you’re out of store, if you go home and Google it, it’s too late and you’ve made the purchasing decision [already]. You want to get that information in store.”
Bringing value to the global ecosystem
Qualcomm announced that it is looking to integrate RAIN functionality into its chipsets and will be working with the RAIN Alliance. Its chipsets are widely used to power mobile devices including some Samsung models. Qualcomm’s appeal is in how widespread its chipsets are – going back to the earlier argument Muller made about wanting to ensure every customer can ease RAIN easily, and isn’t discounted because of the smartphone they own.
“Our conversations today are covering over 80% of the global handset market,” said Dr Muller when I asked him about collaborating with these chipset manufacturers. “This is a relatively recent effort, so we’re building relationships … engaging in this conversation and educating [people] what RAIN is and why it matters.”
The hope, then, is to take RAIN to the next level – by encouraging widespread adoption and generating value for the whole ecosystem.
“We do see strong ecosystem interest and industry engagement in building this future,” concluded Dr Muller.
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