QR Codes - Internet to Cell Phone via Camera

An anonymous reader writes "From ITWorldCanada comes an article about a technology that might change the way people use their cell phones in North America: 'A Toronto-based software developer wants to bring Quick Response (QR) codes to Canada, and an industry analyst says this may appeal to companies offering products and services to youth.' McDonald's restaurants in Japan having been using the codes for over a year to present nutritional information on the cell phones of their customers. QR codes were originally developed by Tokyo-based Denso Wave Inc. and are common in Japan. When published in print form — on billboards, transit ads, vehicles or other media — consumers can then take pictures of the images and have them converted to links, phone numbers or other advertising messages."

Comments

Oooh, can I point out the flaw in the plan?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yes this exists in Japan. QR Codes are an "open" patent, the company that owns the patent has published the details so that anyone can implement it and doesn't enforce its patent except for the name.

This means it is IMPLEMENTED on a LOT of phones.

So what does this western company do? Implement it on Windows Mobile 5 or 6.

Eheh, why not implement it on the iPhone and go for an even more limited audience? (Sorry fanboys, but even with its massive success the iPhone is still only a tiny part of the market, although it is possible that with just 1 phone Apple will get a share that reaches while digits)

Hint, MS ain't exactly owning the market for mobile phones, especially those owned by youths. What advertiser is going to include a bloody ugly area in their carefully designed ad that can't be used by 95% of phones. (Getting real market share data from MS in this area is next to impossible, they are very reluctant to release hard figures)

If this canadian company had any smarts they would at least get it to run on Symbian (the majority OS) and preferably do it so that it simply runs on anything that has a camera. That is what the Japanese did.

Without this, this will just be another, it worked in Japan and failed in the west tech stories. Remember i-mode anyone?

I would also try to launch this in europe where carriers are slightly less restrictive about third party software on "their" phones.