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past and over to the fitting room. Whether she moves to the till will be logged by Walkbase and its client.
“往上看一看。”一位来自芬兰名为Walkbase零售分析公司的Edward Armishaw说到，他随手指向了镜面柱子上方的一个白色盒子。这是一个通过顾客的智能手机所释放找寻Wi-Fi网络的信号来追踪他们足迹的传感器，在伦敦市牛顿街上，有上百个类似的传感器隐藏分布在各大百货公司中。一位身着银色羽绒夹克的顾客漫步走进试衣间，对此毫无察觉。Walkbase和它的客户会记录下她是否走到了柜台。
Think of it as footfall 2.0. For many years shops used
rudimentary
“break-beam” systems—lasers stretched across their entrances—to count people in and out. Only recently have they begun to follow customers inside their buildings, says Nick Pompa of ShopperTrak, an American firm whose work with 2,100 clients worldwide, including malls in Las Vegas and in Liverpool, makes it a giant in the area.
人们把这种传感器看作是footfall 升级版。长久以来，商店使用尚未成熟的“break-beam”系统来计算进出的顾客数量，这主要是利用激光计算进出大门的人数。“直到最近，人们才开始追踪走进他们大楼的顾客。”美国公司ShopperTrak的Nick Pompa 谈到，这家公司是这个领域里的巨头，他们为全世界2100名客户服务，其中包括拉斯维加斯和利物浦的商场。
Tracking technologies are ingenious. Some flash out a code to smartphone cameras by means of LED lighting; others, such as IndoorAtlas, a
startup
with headquarters in California and Finland, monitor how devices disrupt a store’s
geomagnetic
field. With smartphone ownership rising, the market for tracking phones indoors could grow fivefold between now and 2021, to a total of $23bn, says Research and Markets, a market-research firm.
追踪技术是极其巧妙的。一些是通过LED灯光这种方法向智能手机的镜头闪光传递一段编码；其他诸如在加利福利亚州和芬兰都设立总部的新兴公司IndoorAtlas监视设备是如何扰乱一家商店的磁场。随着拥有智能手机的人数增多，一家名为Research and Markets的市场研究公司表示，追踪室内手机的市场可能在从现在起到2021年的这段时间内快速增长五倍，市值总额达到230亿美元。
