October 2, 2003
More on Comparative Pricing with a Camera Phone
Following yesterday's post on comparative pricing at Amazon.com thanks to a camera phone and NeoMedia technology, Eric Lin for TheFeature.com describes exactly how it works:
"The shopper works by using your cameraphone to take a picture of a book's ISBN number (by using the bar code). Then using a proprietary application, the picture is sent to NeoMedia, who will use the bar code to determine the ISBN number and send you Amazon's price for that book.
Eric Lin points out that "no mention is made of whether you will be able to purchase the book from your handset. The application, which runs on the Nokia Series 60 phones, will launch on the 3650 first and follow on other models".
And Lin makes a valid point, saying in essence that since taking a picture of a bar code is so much eaiser than entering a URL or a product name, this type of application could turn out to be a popular m-commerce application.
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