Augmented Reality and mobile means there’s no such thing as “normal” barcodes any more

For a variety of reasons, European and American audiences have been fairly resistant to 2d barcodes. Having become ferociously popular in other parts of the world, they’ve never really broken through here. But today’s launch of a service called ScanLife Packaging Connect using good old fashioned 1d barcodes makes me think that 2d codes might not need to succeed.

Traditional barcodes?

UPC barcode

EAN barcode

Those are a UPC barcode and an EAN barcode. The Universal Product Code and European Article Number are a staple of consumer products all over the world. Go into any shop in any country in the world, and you’ll find them. They hold an extremely limited amount of information – usually just the name of the product and its price. 2d barcodes, on the other hand, now they hold a lot of information. They can tell you where the product came from, how old it is, what crate it was in. They can store detailed product information. The more complex ones can even store snippets of media, like clips of song or video.

One of the most common uses for them is on mobile devices. 2d barcodes like QR Code or Datamatrix can activate phone functions – they can create an SMS for you to send, or send your mobile browser to a particular website. The entire URL can be stored in a 2d code thanks to it’s greater data storage.

But increasingly, UPC barcodes can do these things as well.

What’s the story?

Scanbuy is one of the biggest mobile barcode service providers in “the West”. Its barcode scanning application, ScanLife, can read all the major 1d and 2d barcode standards and works anywhere in the world. Once it has scanned the barcode, it connects to the ScanLife database to check what information is associated with the code. It doesn’t even need a data connection to do this – in locations where you don’t have access to 3G or Wi-Fi, it will communicate with the server through MMS.

Today, Scanbuy has announced a new service with a company called Augme (this isn’t the first time they’ve worked together). Augme is essentially an expert on delivering optimised content to mobile devices from pretty much any source – but specialising in activating Augmented Reality features through tags and barcodes. A few weeks ago, Scanbuy added UPC and EAN barcodes to the ScanLife platform – so between the two companies, they can completely mobilise 1d barcodes. Using its server-side database, Scanbuy can attach any content or actions to a 1d barcode same as a 2d barcode, and Augme can deliver any content though a 1d barcode that a 2d barcode could be used for.

What will Scanbuy and Augme be using this for?

The two companies are working closely with packaging printers to get as many 1d barcodes as possible into the database. This is called the “ScanLife Packaging Connect”, and the plan is to “activate” thousands of products over the next year. Scanning the barcode for any of these products with ScanLife will not only provide price comparison, but can also deliver content, coupons and active web addresses.

What we think?

If a 1d barcode can do all the things a 2d barcode can, then what’s the difference? Well, there are still reasons to stick with 2d. While “Packaging Connect” is a very cool service that boosts the usefulness of 1d barcodes, it does require constant connectivity. If you lack a data connection, then you have to use costly MMS to enable the service. 2d barcodes can contain all of their own data, whereas this service demands that you connect to ScanLife. Especially in terms of enterprise customers, that reduces the attractiveness of the service. If you’re scanning thousands of shipping barcodes, the less time you spend uploading and downloading information the better.

It’s worth mentioning that ScanLife and Augme aren’t the first to do these things. ShopSavvy has been mobilising UPC barcodes for ages now, and almost anything that you can take a picture of with a mobile can be linked to a website these days. It’s just that the reach of Scanlife and Augme combined can drive the mobilisation of 1d barcodes to a much greater number of companies.