When Apple entered the tracker market with AirTags, it had a significant advantage over well-established players like Tile. Every iPhone, iPad, and MacBook in the world could potentially assist in locating lost items through the "Find My" network, and Tile's community is small by comparison (Apple's anti-competitive changes, which led to repeated delays in AirTags (Possibly).

And now Tile is fighting back with the help of another giant in the technology world: Amazon. The company announced that Tile will join the Amazon Sidewalk platform on June 14.

Sidewalk is Amazon's system that allows devices to communicate with each other without Wi-Fi. According to the company, Sidewalk uses a combination of "Bluetooth Low Energy, 900 MHz frequencies, and other frequencies" to "unlock unique perks for devices, support other Sidewalk devices in the community, and even locate pets and lost and found items. identify them."

Importantly, Sidewalk can use nearby devices. As Amazon explains, "You have the option to share the approximate location of your bridge to help your neighbors and provide benefits such as helping them locate their pets."

This is where Tile membership becomes valuable to tracker owners. Currently, if you lose your Tile outside of Bluetooth range, you rely on someone with the Tile app installed on their phone to pass the Tile and send you (anonymously) location information.

As of 2020, Tile states that it finds up to 6 million items daily, but with access to Amazon Sidewalk, this number should be much higher.

"Working with Amazon to extend our discovery network by securely connecting to Amazon Sidewalk devices like the Echo smart speaker was an obvious choice," said Tile CEO CJ Prober. Amazon Sidewalk will enhance the finding power of Tile devices and Tile device partners that leverage Tile's finding technology to make it even easier to find lost or misplaced keys, wallets, and other Tile items inside and outside the home. inside and outside the home.

While the increased network scale is welcome, there are of course significant differences between using Amazon and Apple's respective ecosystems to locate lost devices, while iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks are designed to be carried around town, Amazon Echo and Ring devices are (for now) connected to the wall and very static. This means that they won't be walking around to find a lost tile device and are more likely to be useful in residential areas than in city centers.

Nevertheless, combining the power of Amazon Sidewalk with the existing Tile network would at least allow Tile to remain competitive with Apple's new alternative service.