NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

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DD Reiter's Camera Phone Report: Barcodes and Scanning Camera Phones

http://www.cameraphonereport.com/barcodes_and_scanning_camera_phones/

This is an older collection of articles, published May 2005, and most if not all of them relate to Neom or its business. I have read most of these before, but today I have re-read them and see them a little differently. Many of these articles have been posted on this board previously as individual articles; perhaps someone has even posted this link before, although I couldn't find it doing a search of this board.

As I reread this chain of articles, I am going to cut and paste some things that caught my interest today that didn't quite register with me previously:

Here they are:

1) ...Scanbuy, offers what he calls scancommerce software, which links any bar code to the Internet via camera phones. (The square code...is designed to be especially phone-friendly.)

2) Traditional barcodes (e.g., UPC codes) aren't designed for the optics of camera phones. Barcodes designed specifically for camera phones aren't standard.

3) Should the wireless industry use standard barcodes -- that offer limited information storage and weren't designed to work well with camera phones' optics -- or employ barcode technologies designed for camera phones.

4) ...uses QR barcodes (common in Japan) that can be recognized by a camera phone and then transmitted with a Java application.

5) In Japan, QC codes are being used for a variety of applications in conjunction with camera phones. For example, picturephoning.com has an entry from slashdot pointing to a translated article about how camera phone users in Japan can snap a photo of a book's barcode and get a price on Amazon Japan...U.S. cellular operators are still exploring the potential of barcodes. There is a lot of activity by companies in the U.S. and abroad developing camera phone scanning technologies.

6) There is a significant amount of development underway to develop software to turn camera phones into scanning devices for barcodes, text, graphics, etc.

7) Several companies, such as NeoMedia Technologies, Scanbuy and Nextcode, have software for scanning information from barcodes -- either traditional barcodes or proprietary images -- and are trying to stimlulate the market in the United States.

In Japan and, I think, South Korea, you can already purchase camera phones that can read barcodes on business cards that transfer the information into a handset. In the U.S., cellular operators are still trying to figure out the business case for barcode scanning camera phones.

8) Mobot describes its service this way, "Mobot is designed to allow brands and media partners to seamlessly introduce Mobot into the media mix and doesn't require any modifications to existing visual media -- no keywords, phone numbers, URLs, short codes, product codes, or bar codes are necessary.

"Mobot is easier to use than text messaging, and requires only a few 'clicks' to complete a transaction. To ensure the widest user adoption, Mobot is available today on all U.S. wireless carriers and works with all camera phones."

Several companies are actively marketing camera phone-based barcode e-commerce solutions, such as Scanbuy and NeoMedia Technologies. Although Mobot is a competitor, it's generating publicity about the concept that could perhaps help many wireless scanning companies.

9) ... Scanbuy is in the process of launching a new developer forum and will be providing more sample code for its Optical Intelligence software the enables applications to include barcode reading capabilities.

Scanbuy licenses its Optical Intelligence SDK for a variety of wireless operating systems, including Symbian, J2ME, Win32, Palm and Pocket PC. The most difficult aspect of creating the version for Symbian phones was learning Symbian C++ because it's so different from Windows C, says Ashish Muni, chief technology officer at Scanbuy.

10) Neomedia's barcode technology/service relies on camera phone users having its barcode reading software in their handsets (either embedded by handset vendors or operators or downloaded by users) so that subscribers can take a photo of a barcode, transmit the photo to a server and receive information about the product.

11) Jim Levinger of Nextcode Corporation explains that today’s widespread barcodes were never designed for end-user interaction. Nor were they designed for being read with camera mobile phones – far from it.

He believes new barcodes need to be developed for scanning by camera phones.

Both Simon Woodside (www.semacode.org), and Anil Madhavapeddy (www.highenergymagic.com) agree. The use of specific code for camera phone recognition allows for more efficient applications.

Olivier Attia of Scanbuy believes more in the Linux way of doing things. “Working together to achieve maximum interoperability, no matter what code standard,” Olivier says.

12) We’re seeing the emergence of two major schools of thought: The “lets design a new code standard” school and the “old code standards allows for easier acceptance of the application” school.

I think both schools have great points. New barcode technologies allow for more robust camphone-specific solutions. However, the new codes have to be introduced and marketed and end users have to be educated about them.

Old barcodes lack the potential robustness but make up for that with their widespread use and international acceptance by end users.

New code development, old code adoption, intellectual property rights, handset vendor and mobile carrier adoption. They’re but a few important aspects for the adoption of an interoperable standard.

It’s too early to tell where this interoperability issue might take us, through OP3 we’ve found out that all developers see it as a core issue and they are all open to discussion.

13) Thanks to Vanilla Gorilla I learned that Robert Scoble, Microsoft's Longhorn evangelist and blogger extraordinaire, got a demonstration from Neomedia Technologies of camera phones as barcode readers. He calls the application a "killer" for the handsets.

14) OP3, that stands for Optical 3G Scanning Technologies, was established in the summer of 2003 to develop its own barcode scanning technology. However, the company eventually decided to focus on selling third-party scanning products and offer systems integration services.

OP3's goal is to promote wireless e-commerce through camera phone barcode products and and services. The company is one of more than dozen firms -- including software developers and cellular operators -- that have entered a market that has... significant potential.

Camera phone barcode companies

Scanbuy and NeoMedia Technologies are among the software developers. NTT DoCoMo in Japan has been pioneering the use of barcode services for camera phones.

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Food for thought: What is the common theme of most of these statements? How might this common theme impact the timing of PC being commercially available?



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