Nearly 1.6bn coupons will be delivered annually to consumers via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons by 2020, up from 11m this year, Juniper Research predicts. “However, the research cautioned that the use of beacon technology was very much a work in progress, with many retailers concerned that excessive, indiscriminate messages pushed by the beacon could be perceived as intrusive and damage their relationship with the customer,” the research firm says.