Europe to follow S. Korea's M-Commerce

Major European mobile handset companies, such as Vodafone, Nokia, Ericsson, had a meeting in London yesterday to talk about new type of handset that provides ‘barcode reading function’. This function can allow consumers to get more detailed information of products that they want to buy through the Internet via barcode reading handsets. In addition, people are able to use coupons that provide barcode by reading with their handsets. Until now, this kind of service and handsets are not available in Europe mainly due to lack of the common technology between handset makers.
*related article : financial times, Mobile groups study barcode plan

Even though this service is very new in Europe and US, it is just one of the common services that cell phones can provide in South Korea. Many types of handsets with barcode reading function have been available in South Korea since 2004 so that South Koreans have been able to be very smart and clever consumers. In addition, recently RFID reading phone has been released in Korean market. Of course this phone has barcode reading function as well. From now on, Korean consumers can enjoy their shopping not only by reading barcode but also by reading RFID.
Within this year, it is expected that Europeans can start to save their money and choose what they exactly want same as Korean people do now. Meanwhile mobile operators can benchmark Korean’s case for their successful barcode business.