What makes me sad about this is how it effectively stops innovation. The barrier to entry is so high, that only a handful companies can launch an item tracker

What makes me sad about this is how it effectively stops innovation. The barrier to entry is so high, that only a handful companies can launch an item tracker service. And everyone who wants to offer a product in that space needs to play by their rules, they prohibit a lot of use cases. I use a few Chipolo trackers with my iPhone, and I find it infuriating how limited they are. There doesn't seem to be a way to query the data, so I can't eg. make a dashboard that shows location of my items, or make my own app that makes it easier to find my stuff. Every time I look for my keys, it takes me 30 seconds to navigate through Apple's stupid interface, wait for it to update, scroll to the right button, and press the "make sound" button. Without competition we're forever stuck with mediocre software and a fraction of what would be technically possible.