SAN FRANCISCO — CTIA announced yesterday the beginnings of an effort to implement 2D bar-code scanning via camera phones. To succeed, the service will require cooperation among a wide swath of industry players, a least a few years for the technology to get distributed, as well as a large group of interested users. Buy hey, I suppose you have to start somewhere.
Essentially, bar-code scanning allows marketers to either transmit information or interact with users via 2D bar codes. (One-dimensional bar codes are just a bunch of thin lines, but 2D codes look like a poorly played game of Tetris.) Hidden in the 2D bar codes is information like a URL or a phone number, and users can decode that information using the cameras in their phones. The system can work either outside of a carrier’s network, with the phone simply decoding the information, or it can initiate an Internet session to send more info to a user – and (probably more importantly for the industry) send info about the user back to marketers.
CTIA, and by extension the U.S. wireless industry, is hoping to ape Japan’s bar-code scanning successes. According to CTIA’s Wireless Internet Caucus Code Scan Action Team, around 50% of Japanese youth have used bar- code scanning technology.
But there are a number of hurdles for industry to overcome before camera phone bar-code scanning hits the streets. Aside from getting users interested in it (a potentially monumental challenge) handset makers must also embed the technology in their phones and players must agree on a shared administration system. CTIA managed to pull this off with its common short code initiative, but there’s no guarantee it can do so again.
Further, it seems to me that the basics of a bar-code scanning service are already available via today’s short codes. Short codes allow marketers to interact directly with users, and don’t require wireless industry players to implement new handset technologies. Further, texting a message to a short number seems easier to explain than “use your camera phone to take a picture of this weird, Tetris-like design.”
But again, I suppose you have to start somewhere.
