Arm, which provides the processors widely employed in smartphones, announced today an Arm Retail offering that promises to enable retailers to transform the in-store shopping experience by applying algorithms to massive amounts of data in real time.
Charlene Marini, vice president of the Internet of Things (IoT) Services Group at Arm, says Arm is combining the Arm Pelion IoT platform with the Arm Treasure Data customer data platform (CDP). The Arm Treasure Data CDP is based on technology Arm gained via its acquisition of Treasure Data last year.
Announced in advance of the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2019 conference next week, Arm is trying to extend its dominance of smartphones and other embedded systems used, for example, in digital signage and point of sales (PoS) systems into the realm of advanced analytics.
Marini says Arm Retail will make it simpler for retailers to optimize store layout and product placement based on inferences drawn from real-time data using metrics such as item popularity, turnover, aisle traffic and dwell time. By analyzing metrics, retailers in turn would be able to personalize in-store advertisements displayed on digital signage at a specific aisle in the store.
“Retailers can now have a more holistic view of the shopping experience,” says Marini.
Arm Retail then provides a mechanism for collecting in-store data in a way that makes it possible to either analyze that data on the Arm CDP or share that data with another enterprise platform that is being employed to apply AI, says Marini.
Despite the rise of online commerce, retailers still generate most of the revenue from in-store sales. AI in theory creates an opportunity to bridge the divide between e-commerce and in-store shopping experiences. Whether that gets more customers to buy products in stores remains to be seen. But at the very least, the in-store shopping experience should soon become a lot more rewarding for customers and retailers alike.
