Mobile 2D barcodes
I’m really mad at what I’ve just been reading on neteco - The AFMM (the mobile marketing association in France) has launched the 2D barcode in France for third parties based on Abaxia’s solution. As usual I’m really disappointed to see that those guys can’t let a tool live by itself and grow the market - they have to put their hands on it and try to kill it by making it so hard to use.
The full point of 2D barcodes is to have people use their mobile to access online mobile informations easily. It’s really like every object in a store has its barcode and i can click on it and get infos on that very object, like traceability of the meat I buy at Carrefour or latest single preview from this artist or whatever… That use has been developed in Japan for years! It was mass market in 2003 when I used to live there. And here the only point of that mobile ecosystem is to try and make money out of it and use a technology that probably will not work with our neighbor’s.
QR-Codes have been used in Japan for years and is OPEN. Readers are available on every platform. Creating a QR-Code is free, there are even opensource scripts to generate them and they can contain up to over a thousand of characters.
OK, the operator is not the one managing the bindings between a code and a URL - but why should the content provider have to deal with the operator - do I ask ICANN when I create a URL on my blog ?
Instead of promoting the use of mobile Internet by letting everyone play with those codes and spread them, just as always in France they will remain in the hands of a few big agencies remaining an “elite” usage.
I’m a strong believer in any helping technology that helps users jump from an environment to another, web to mobile, rl to mobile, web to sl … but trying to monetize/control those behaviors seem totally counter-productive to me.
EASY AND FREE !
Actually, the 2D barcode launched in France is based on the mobiletag solution. Mobiletag (a French company that proposes a global solution regrouping: the creation and management of barcodes, the readers and applications for mobiles, a platform for managing information), the AFMM and the 3 French mobile operators (Orange, SFR and Bouygues) have already signed a mutual license agreement concerning the specifications of the 2D Barcode Flashcode, and mobiletag has recently won the invitation to tender of SFR.
Thus, 2D bar code now has its standard in France.
The mobiletag application for reading barcodes can be downloaded for free on mobiletag.com and it is now embedded directly into mobile phones during construction. For example, thanks to the invitation to tender accepted by SFR, mobiletag readers will be now directly embedded into the SFR, Orange, Bouygues mobile phones.
Basically what this means is that today the position of the 2D barcode in France is strong and clear and marks the beginning of Marketing operations.
Operators from other countries are also integrating this technology, leading to international interoperability and thus increasing the attraction of the mobiletag 2D barcode to advertisers and simple users.
As for the non-commercial use of the 2D barcode, on the new version of mobiletag’s website which (will be launched soon) anybody will have the possibility to create their own contact and web tags and place them on any support desired – paper, web, etc. It will be EASY and FREE
Consequently, the barcode technology is beginning to open up to the general public and it will not remain an “elite” usage.
CFV
VIALA
14 May 08 at 6:40 pm
I’d say it’s some good news - still lookign forward to understanding what “commercial use” really means in that context and how those are going to be monetized - back in the days the revenue model of pay per click was just silly for the announcer with prices as high as on the web (if not higher) while there was no money to be made out of it ….
alex
14 May 08 at 6:55 pm