I was never big on those “take a picture of a barcode and buy Britney tickets” schemes so popular with mobile solutions providers, but this sort of turns that whole concept on its head. Mobeam, created by Ecrio, provider of streaming mobile apps for NTT DoCoMo, flashes any light source on the handset to simulate a barcode for any laser scanner. That’s right. The clerk at Wal-Mart only needs to scan your phone to get 50 cents off your 7-Up.
There are no signed partners on this technology and it might be just a flash in the proverbial mobile pan, but this is one of the few projects of this sort that actually piqued my interest. If you could send a coupon via MMS or even SMS, flash the phone at the cash register, and be on your way, imagine the uptake in retail offerings and, to an extent, the time and effort saved in coupon clipping.
Clearly, this technology is good enough to encourage women to kiss their RAZRs
Couple this with some GPS and you’ve got a real starter. Now if only the product page weren’t just a 3 minute flash movie, maybe we could get some solid info. Look for a full interview with these folks next week.
Hi John,
Bar code scanning from the phone screen has actually been around for a while. For example, at CTIA last year Sprint had a promotion where they SMS’d a barcode based coupon to your cell phone that you could scan to ride the Monorail for free.
The problem in that case was how close the phone screen needs to be to the scanner to work.
I agree with your analysis, however. Bar codes on your phone is going to be the easiest route to mobile coupons here in the US until we start adopting mobile payments in a big way.
Cheers,
Sean
It seems that you might need to install something in the handset, as I don’t see how could I just start flashing barcodes anywhere. Also, I’m interested to know how can we track what barcodes we have. Seems more complicated than quite common sms barcodes (www.mobiqa.com, http://www.swiftpass.com, http://www.gavitec.de, to name a few).
Cellfire is a mobile promotions company that provides offers via a mobile phone app or WAP. It gives a unique promo code that can’t be used again. It’s not a bar code, but once POS systems have the capability or the phones do in the case of Mobeam, it is a way cool service.