Note to readers: I’m writing a series about iBeacon. This is the third installment in the series, explaining how iBeacon is nothing without an app.
As I discussed in part 2 of my blog series on iBeacons, an iBeacon works by transmitting three numbers. Receivers can then interpret these 
three numbers to figure out what is nearby, and potentially take action.
Without an application on the device listening, an iBeacon does nothing. If an iBeacon transmits in the forest and no application receives anything, it does not make a sound.
iBeacons are triggers, but do not provide any sort of service themselves.
When an iBeacon’s transmissions are received, its numbers either match the numbers an application is looking for, and that application is triggered, or the identifying numbers do not match and no action is taken. Without an application to trigger, an iBeacon cannot do anything. Without application developers, an iBeacon is just another wireless transmitter.
After processing transmissions that match an application’s trigger, the application may take a variety of actions. It is within the application that the opaque numerical identifiers can be translated to a human readable message like “Welcome to the Aerohive Headquarters!”
Due to the limited storage and processing power on most battery-powered receivers, most applications will interact with cloud services in some way.
An iBeacon is a trigger. What might you do when you walk up to a building? An application triggered by an iBeacon might itself trigger an action: unlocking doors, turning on lights, activating the coffee maker when your phone goes into the kitchen in the morning, adjusting building climate control from “empty” to “staff is present,” and so on.
Anything you can dream of and your application developers can build, you can do.
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Read more on iBeacons
iBeacon Part 1: What the heck is it?
iBeacon Part 2: How does it work?