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P&G Backs Mobile Barcode Scan Approach, But Few Retailers Can Afford To Wait
What type of light sources within the phone?
A Mobeam document said the mobile “light sources can be any LED already used on phones, such as a message waiting indicator, a charge indicator or even the infrared LED used in proximity sensors to turn off your screen when it is close to your face. A mobeamed barcode fools the scanner into thinking that it has seen data reflected off of a printed barcode.”
Mobeam, like many vendors, overstates its case, falsely saying that mobile devices cannot be read by retailers today. That’s clearly not true, but it is true that most of the older scanners have difficulty consistently reading from many of today’s phones.
Mobeam stresses the extreme value to retailers of making a far higher percentage—if not the totality—of mobile phones readable by its systems today, which is quite true. But the company underestimates—at least publicly—how quickly that can happen. And by “happen,” we’re talking about getting these systems into the hands of so many consumers (70 percent? 80 percent?) that retailers are confident they don’t need to do scanner upgrades for mobile.
The upgrade scenario is to go to a 2D optical scanner. The pros and cons of this approach go beyond speed versus cost. It is true that Mobeam’s approach should work on all phones and all scanners. But for any form to be compliant, it must use upgraded hardware and/or software. That gets back to the installed base issue previously mentioned.
Not only would an upgrade be faster, but it would also likely work better for more phones—especially older phones with weaker resolutions.
In the meantime, retailers are left to get creative about ways to get around today’s limitations. For example, about a year ago, a Target IT exec described a florescent light problem. Because fluorescents were obscuring displayed barcodes, associates were instructed to hold the phone above the scanner (flatbed or handheld wand) so the phone and the hand holding the phone block out much of that fluorescent light.
Yankee Group Senior Analyst Nick Holland applauded Mobeam’s approach, but wondered if it could possibly grow fast enough quickly enough to make a difference. “I think they’re onto something, but they may have some difficulties with the huge range of handsets on the market,” he said. “Very cool nonetheless and requires zero POS upgrade.”
Holland, as usual, is quite correct. But clever or not, the speed of mobile adoption might rob from retailers the luxury of being able to wait. To support a huge percentage of phones right away may just force a series of painful upgrades.
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
