Hot in the US - Mobile Barcodes?
Apparently, Mobile Barcodes aren’t doing so hot in the US. Most people in the United States are completely unaware of their existence unless they happen to be a mobile aficionado. Recently, The New York Times ran an article (link to http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/business/media/08adcol.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin) which states that the pilot being run by Mobile Discovery (link to http://www.mobilediscovery.com) is seeing some resistance.
According to Juniper Research Limited, there will be almost three billion barcodes sent out by 2011 (link to http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=847282). That’s a worldwide figure, but the number could be drastically increased if the technology catches on in the United States. However, I’ve got a feeling that Near Field Communication is going to take off in the United States either in conjunction with barcodes or leaving barcodes in the dust.
In the Washington Post(link to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR2008041700990.html), Dianne also says that AdAge had a successful run on some barcodes which drove up sales by a factor of 650%. However, as the article states, the majority of mobile users in the US do not have phones equipped with cameras, and even fewer have phones preloaded with the software required to scan codes. For the technology to take off, it would require a massive movement by the users and mobile companies to migrate to the technology necessary to support barcodes. From there, it’s still going to take a while for the population to become adjusted to using the barcodes.
On symbii.com (link to http://symbii.com/stories.php?sid=735&tid=52&pid=1348), they make mention of a Sprint advertisement in Wired Magazine which gives you a phrase and number to send a text message to so that users can download Scanlife (link to http://www.scanlife.com). Once you have Scanlife installed, you can scan a barcode on the ad to get a few free ringtones.
Now, don’t take this statement for fact because my source is a liar, cheat, and a horse-thief (you know who you are), but I hear tell that Wal-Mart may be considering switching to QR codes or technology such as that. That may give the mobile barcode market in the US a significant bump if Wal-Mart chooses to make information on those codes lead a customer’s cellphone to handy information about the product. Even if it allows you to keep a running tally of the expenses you’re racking up without using a calculator, it’s still a decent bump. As I said, that’s not set in stone by any means, and it may just be office gossip. I can’t say a whole lot more about it or some men in blue suits might come to get me.
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“However, I’ve got a feeling that Near Field Communication is going to take off in the United States either in conjunction with barcodes or leaving barcodes in the dust.”
Bena — Discussing with ecrio (www.ecrio.com), Nokia and Kyocera which both had nice NFC m-commerce at CTIA Wireless, it is now clear to me that NFC is about the “last 12 inches” of an m-commerce transaction (ie presenting the coupon to the reader at the POS). In contrast, bar code scanning is more about the “first 12 inches” of the transaction. Especially when talking about 1D bar codes reading from a camera phone. No competition imho between the two tech, on the contrary, they seem complementary.
“For the technology to take off, it would require a massive movement by the users and mobile companies to migrate to the technology necessary to support barcodes. ” — fully agree. However it is key to understand that all current readers are limited by the optics of the camera phone. In absence of a costly, high-end camera phone with a macro mode, most bar codes can’t be read unless they are of a significant size. Such size being often seen as an obstacle by advertisers and publishers, and therefore another obstacle on the road to broad adoption of bar code reading from camera phones.
CAse in point, about my first point in my previous comment:
“– Early use of mobile barcode technology will be gradually complimented by the emergence of NFC (Near Field Communication)” (from the Juniper study, as quoted in the page your second paragraph in the post above links to). Complementary technologies, not competing.
Hi Benoit, I didn’t actually write this article but you have a good point. What confuses me though is that with NFC you need a special device and additional equipment for tagging or scanning. For camera code barcodes you don’t. So why the NFC - it seems to be an expensive addition to an already crowded barcode market. Especially as on Nokia devices you can sometimes use NFC services - even without scanning but inputting code.
Bena