Mobile barcodes @ OMA World Part II

Rating: Ah, Gowan. Start another technical committee
by Tony Dennis

As I mentioned previously, the whole
mobile barcode sector is riddled with incompatibilities. So what’s
the industry’s typical reaction? You’ve got it, somebody founds yet
another specialist technical forum.

In this case it has turned out
to be the Mobile Codes Consortium – which somehow gets abbreviated
to MC². Anyway, the conspirators have put together a web site here
which aims to encourage others to join in.

But what’s really
missing is an industry accepted standard. Which is exactly what the
OMA is capable of producing.

It just so happened that I
fortuitously bumped into two of the leading shakers and movers in
this whole technical minefield last night @ OMA World.
Namely,
Torulf Jernstrom from Nokia – who seemed to be the chief
co-ordinator and Dr Frank Muller from Gavitec who’s specialised in
this sector for ages.
What they’d just been up to was holding a
meeting of the Mobile Codes Ad Hoc group. It’s one of those
precursors to a full OMA technical committee.
The pair told me
that around 20 people had attended and the whole initiative was
looking good. Especially since the Ad Hoc group had representatives
from more of the key technology vendors that MC² seems to have.
The
meeting even include reps from Mobile Tag – which has been spun off
from France’s leading mobile software developer – Abaxia.
As far
as I can make out the Group is attracting enough support from the
operators themselves that something will eventually get off the
ground.
About time too.

Related News:

1. MC2 Mobile Codes Consortium convinces OMA and GSMA to drive mobile marketing using 2D barcodes
2. Mobile barcodes explained at OMA World bar
3. OMA World: There’s too many standards bodies
4. Text is bigger than Internet search
5. Australian Operator Telstra embeds QR barcodes into handsets