Mobile Tagging - New Business Opportunities through 2D-Barcodes

> Opinion Paper Mobile Tagging New Business Opportunities through 2D-Barcodes 2008 / 10 www.detecon.com Mobile Tagging Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary ............................................................................................ 3 2 Mobile Tagging Today......................................................................................... 4 2.1 Mobile Tagging Technology ........................................................................ 4 2.2 Mobile Tagging around the World ............................................................... 6 2.3 Mobile Tagging Ecosystem (Players).......................................................... 8 3 Future Mobile-Tagging Business Models .......................................................... 12 3.1 Pull tagging................................................................................................ 12 3.2 Push tagging ............................................................................................. 14 4 Strategic Options / What should Companies do?.............................................. 15 5 Reading on........................................................................................................ 16 6 The Authors....................................................................................................... 17 7 The Company.................................................................................................... 18 Opinion Paper 2 Detecon International GmbH Mobile Tagging 1 Executive Summary Barcodes have become ubiquitous on everything from grocery items to postal parcels. Traditional 1D-Barcodes can only save a small amount of characters. The more novel 2D- barcodes can save more information and open up new business models such as mobile tagging. Mobile tagging is a simple-to-use-technology and describes the process of scanning, decoding and reading out the content of a 2D-barcode by using the camera of a mobile device. Mobile Tagging WWW Decoding Point to a code Take a picture Decode Link to a the code website The mobile phone’s camera is pointed at the code and an installed code reader takes a picture and decrypts the code. Thus with no additional equipment the mobile phone is turned into a scanner for 2D-barcodes. Various types of information can be stored in the code, such as a link to a website, a simple text message or a phone number. With mobile tagging any medium can be linked directly to the multimedia capability of the mobile web, anytime and anywhere. Today, mobile tagging is already part of everyday life and a big success in Japan. It has led there to a wide variety of new, consumer-oriented applications. In Asia, mobile tags can be found on everything from products to magazines, food, posters, and advertisements. Mobile tagging is expected to reach Asian levels in the foreseeable future in Europe and other parts of the world where it is currently only used in the field of logistics. The vision behind mobile tagging is the idea of absolute convergence between conventional and online media. Mobile tagging links static printed information with the internet and encourages highly interactive behavior of the user. Consequently, many new promising business models and applications are conceivable and open new market opportunities for many players, especially for consumer-oriented companies, advertisers and mobile operators. Particularly mobile advertising can be seen as the most important driver for the adoption of the technology. To bring this about, the key players in the mobile tagging ecosystems need to work together. This paper gives an overview over the relevant topics and an outlook to possible future scenarios and the resulting new market opportunities for several players. Opinion Paper 3 Detecon International GmbH Mobile Tagging 2 Mobile Tagging Today Mobile Tagging describes the decoding of 2D-barcodes by using the camera of a mobile device. With special software, a short message or an internet address can be converted into a 2D-barcode resembling a crossword puzzle, which is called a "tag". Users of mobile tagging can scan these codes with their mobile phone’s camera. Software on the phone decodes the tag and displays a text message or directly connects to a mobile website. In essence, mobile tagging overcomes the barriers between traditional, non-interactive and physical media such as product descriptions, print, billboards, catalogues, TV and the internet. Mobile tagging provides consumer-oriented companies and marketing organizations with the ability to link their products and services directly to specific web pages on the (mobile) internet. It is a technology with great potential for these players to reach large numbers of consumers with new offerings. In the following we will describe and analyze the corresponding technology and use cases around mobile tagging. 2.1 Mobile Tagging Technology Mobile tagging offers a simple, virtually zero-cost method to allow user to connect immediately from a printed symbol to a relevant web-site. It is much simpler and cheaper to use than comparable connectivity technologies such as RFID and NFC (near field communications). Mobile tagging involves code-generator, 2D-barcodes and code reader. Code generator Code generators generate 2D-barcodes out of a string of characters such as a URL or a text message. For professional use code generators are part of a sophisticated supply chain or media solutions. For individual use several free code generators for private consumers are freely available on the internet, e.g.: QR Code and DataMatrix generator by i-nigma1 QR Code Generator by Kaywa2 Mobile Barcoder (Firefox plugin that creates QR codes) With these simple tools anybody is able to create any type of 2D-barcode. 1 http://www.i-nigma.com/personal/Create.asp 2 http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ Opinion Paper 4 Detecon International GmbH Mobile Tagging Mobile tagging codes (2D-barcodes) 2D-barcodes can be considered an extension of the well-known 1D version: 1D-barcodes are one of the most widespread and well-known global identification applications and can be seen anywhere in the world. We all know them from supermarkets, where 1D barcodes are normally read by laser-based scanners. For consumer goods they are used at point-of-sale and throughout the supply chain. 1D-barcodes can contain data up to ten bytes which is too little to store messages, or internet URLs etc. Instead, they contain unique identifiers which are associated with certain contents or products. 2D-barcodes are more novel but have already Barcodes (ISO standard) become commonplace in countries with faster adoption of more advanced mobile phones and EAN/UPC (1D) networks, such as Japan and Korea. Different Capacity: 8 to 13 types of codes can be found worldwide as there numeric digits. is still relatively little standardisation. DataMatrix Error correction: no and QR Code are currently emerging as de- Other: ISO-Standard. facto standards. In addition there are several other 2D-barcodes which are used worldwide, QR-Code (2D) such as EZcode, BeeTagg, Aztec-Code (used Capacity: up to 400 at Deutsche Bahn for online-tickets) and bytes (for typical camera Shotcode. As seen in other technologies the phone). current fragmentation of standards in the market Error correction: yes has until know been a barrier to widespread (up to 30%) adoption. Other: Originally developed for automotive manufacturing. Fundamentally, there is no difference between 2D-barcodes and 1D-barcodes. Since 2D- DataMatrix (2D) barcodes carry information both horizontally and Capacity: up to 400 vertically, 2D-barcodes are capable of encoding bytes (for typical camera about ten times the amount of data in phones).