Mobile barcode technology has been around for some time, but is it now at a tipping point in the West?
At the beginning of 2004, seven per cent of Japanese mobile subscribers used 2D barcodes. By Q3 2006 this figure increased to 60 per cent, and today it’s over 70 per cent.The practice of scanning mobile barcodes in public places is now so commonplace that codes have even been placed on tombstones to that grieving visitors can access pics and info on the deceased.
This enviable state of affairs has been made possible by operator compulsion. Simply, the Japanese carriers make sure that virtually all handsets embed the same reader application so that every printed code can be successfully scanned for painless routing to the destination.
In theory, scanning a code printed on a magazine, poster or, er, tombstone to link to content, discounts or info is so much quicker and more foolproof than texting a shortcode or typing in a URL. But when was the last time you Western readers did it?
Click here to read the full article.
Advertisement
