1. Introduction on 2D barcode
The barcodes we normally see are 1D barcodes, which have been widely applied into industry, business, national defense, transport, finance and insurance, medical and healthcare, post, and office automation. But the limited information capacity of containing tens of digits, characters or symbols makes them used only to identify objects, while description of objects must rely on those pre-built computer databases or networks, otherwise these 1D barcodes will turn of no sense. That is why the 2D barcode technology with big information capacity, high reliability, and powerful security was produced.
Basically speaking, 2D barcode is a simple and cheap information storage method; under certain encoding methods, 2D barcode technology may compress data sources such as digits, texts and images into geometric shapes, and decoders after reading these geometric shapes will revert the shapes into the original data with proper decoding methods. Different from the traditional 1D barcodes, 2D barcodes represent information in 2 dimensions, jumping much higher in storage capacity that thousands of characters can be stored into a postmark-size barcode symbol.
Currently there are over 20 types of 2D barcode systems popular in the world, and China has had the 2D barcode systems with own intellectual property rights, namely, Syscan Grid Matrix Code (GM Code) and Syscan Compact Matrix Code (CM Code), both of which have passed the technical verification held by the Information Industry Ministry of China.
GM 2D Code creatively combines the identification mode and positioning mode of code images and uniform lay out in the code images, while its optimized data compression method and data correction method contribute to save the format information area, while have been necessary in the current 2D code images but can only prevent limited defaces. The code images of GM 2D Code are constituted by its substructure, macro modules; although large area of defaces occur in the code images, the image identification method still can quickly and accurately detect the direction of code images by applying the statistical rule that such macro modules are laid in layers. These creative designs enable GM 2D Code to, at the same time of maintaining data storage capacity and data density equivalent to that of the current 2D barcodes, have the advantages of deface prevention, deflection prevention, and decidability of 360° oblique view, thus believed to be the only 2D barcode without “fatal points” in the world. And just because of the above-mentioned technical innovation as well the large capacity and powerful error correction, Syscan GM 2D Code has been a preferred code system for application in logistics and handphone.
Sample code image of Syscan GM 2D Code
2. Application of 2D barcodes in handphone
Handphone 2D barcode is resulted from integration of 2D barcodes and mobile communication terminals (handphones). Over the recent years, with the expansion of camera handphones and MMS handphones and rapid development of mobile communication value-added services, the 2D barcode technologies applicable into hanphones have been invented. Handphone 2D barcodes means to encode the involved information through 2D barcodes, making the 2D barcode information saved, read, or circulated in handphones in the way of MMS. Handphones can thus be used as carriers of 2D barcode information when integrated with 2D barcode readers, also handphones can be built in or downloaded with 2D barcode reading engines so as to read 2D barcode identification on goods or magazines and get the effective information hidden in such barcodes for development of the relevant applications. By now, handphone 2D barcodes have had relatively mature market applications in Europe, America, Korea, and Japan as well as other developed countries or regions. With development of the mobile communication industry of our country and arrival of the 3G generation, handphone 2D barcodes will play roles in our various aspects such as dressing, food, residence, and transport, deeply changing our living habits and promote an application peak in our country.
Sample of a handphone 2D barcode
3. Application methods of 2D barcodes in handphone
3.1 Application of handphone 2D barcode reading engines (data input, decoding for network surfing, decoding for anti-counterfeiting)
Handphone 2D barcode reading engines are a kind of software supporting handphones to scan and identify 2D barcodes. Camera handphones, after built-in or downloaded with 2D barcode reading engines, will read information hidden in 2D barcodes by scanning the 2D barcodes on objects, enabling users to enjoy convenience brought by 2D barcodes.
A survey conducted by Anchor Research in June 2005 shows that handphone 2D barcode reading engines are ranked No.3 following photo taking and music listening among the use habits of consumers, specifically, 58.1% surveyors insist that they want handphone with 2D barcode reading engines.
3.1.1 Application in data input
This type of application includes the process of taking photos for 2D barcodes by handphone, reading the information inside the barcode, and storing.
Sample of data input
(l) Input of namecard information
During namecard making, name, telephone number and other information may be encoded in 2D barcodes and then printed at edge of the namecard. When people exchange their namecards, they may use handphones to take photo for the 2D barcodes, and after decoding store the information of the other party into the contract list of their own handphones, saving the traditional hand input process and overcoming the current difficulty of inaccurate namecard identification. Electronic data transfer is thus realized, making convenience to users.
Sample namecard with Syscan GM 2D Code
Sample namecard with Syscan GM 2D Code
(2) Application of 2D barcode technology integrated with handphone 2D barcode reading engine into handling of traffic accidents
When a traffic policeman takes duty, he may use a handphone to read the barcode on the driving license on any vehicle breaching traffic rules (such as running a red light or drunk driving), and input the corresponding code for rule breach. After data input, the policeman may use a portable printer installed in the police car to print the fine notice, while information on the 2D barcode and the record of rule breach will be automatically sent to the central database. All these procedures can be completed within 30 seconds, thus traffic management level and work efficiency of traffic policemen can be largely promoted and traffic safety and smoothness is secured.
3.1.2 Application of handphone decoding for network surfing
In the future life, normal products, namecards, and even advertisements on newspaper and magazines will be attached with corresponding barcodes; people use their handphones built-in with 2D barcode reading engines to scan such 2D barcodes and detect the relevant IP, then will be automatically linked to the corresponding WAP websites, directly browsing products, downloading vouchers, paying tickets through handphones, as well as easily experiencing flow media information such as rings, games, and videos. Consumers are thus brought with a brand new mode for handphone network surfing.
Based on surveys conducted by research agencies, normal affairs wanted by consumers to be realized through handphone are as follows:
Normal affairs for decoding for network surfing
3.1.3 Application of handphone decoding for anti-counterfeiting
For a long period, counterfeiting products have threatened direct benefits of enterprises and consumers and serious affected economic development of the country. To protect benefits of enterprises and consumers and ensure healthy development of the market economy, our country and enterprises spend large amount of labors and capital in counterfeiting prevention. But single anti-counterfeiting technology and method and lack of anti-counterfeiting tools limit the final achievements.
Handphones installed with 2D barcode reading engines can effectively solve the above-mentioned problems. 2D barcodes have multi layers of anti-counterfeiting performance, able to use password anti-counterfeiting and software encryption as well as information contained inside such as fingerprints and photos for anti-counterfeiting, giving powerful anti-counterfeiting performance.
The 2D barcode anti-counterfeiting and certificating platform concurrently introduces hardware and business-oriented structure, providing basic information of products and offline Certificates. The manufacturers allocate product codes for each outbound products, where the product codes are 2D codes allocated to the products during production based on the corresponding encoding system, build product information database, and store information on outbound products. Datebase systems are taken as the certificating platform for product anti-counterfeiting. Consumers buying products will use handphones installed with 2D barcode reading engines to scan 2D barcodes on products and check the product information database of the manufacturers so as to tell reality of the products. Application of such an anti-counterfeiting technology is thus considered to significantly promote the normal market orders.
3.2 E-ticket
Paper tickets still play the main role in the industries or departments of civil airline, railway, cinema, stadium, and view spots; but compared with e-tickets, traditional paper tickets have obvious disadvantages in the application process, such as high printing costs (a paper ticket costs RMB40, including the costs in printing, transport and storage), ease to be replicated, fraudulent copy, and ease to have defaces. Ticket operators thus suffer from high labor cost in ticket selling, prevention from fraudulent copy, and failure of maintaining ticket use information. And consumers also suffer from collection of tickets at the selling points, queue to buying tickets, fraudulent copy of tickets, and difficulty to maintain tickets. Market application of handphone 2D barcodes (e-ticket) will effectively solve the above-mentioned problems in the traditional ticketing area. Ticketing market will progressively realize electronization of paper tickets, which will show convenient, safe, fashionable and effective. Realization method of e-tickets will be to jointly uztilize the websites of ticket sellers and the information announcing platform of ticket selling. A consumer requiring to buy a ticket will look for the relevant ticket information, after finding the information, will send a SMS (or surf the Internet) to the ticket selling system, and follow instructions to pay by handphone (or network payment). After payment of the consumer, the ticket selling system will send the e-ticket to the handphone of the consumer in the way of 2D barcode, that is also the end of the ticket buying process. During specific consumption, corresponding services may be provided after the tickets are checked by ticket checking terminals. In areas such as civil aviation that require invoices or boarding passes, automatic terminals printing tickets may be set in airports so as to print boarding passes after scanning barcodes. E-tickets, after applied in such a way, will bring the following values:
※ Satisfying the requirements in information works of various industries, promoting enterprise management level and strengthen competability;
※ Saving plenty of costs in printing and labor, reducing resource wastage, environment-friendly and effective; and
※ Bringing convenient and free ticketing process to consumers.
For example, considering a traveler flow of 70 million person-time, which is the number for the civil aviation system of China in 2004, as long as there are 10 million person-time trying to use e-tickets, the whole civil aviation system will save costs of RMB 0.3 billion, labor costs during agency works and logistic delivery will also be saved, and capital occupied during the sale process will be saved. Additionally, it will help solve capital liquidation and recycling between airline companies and ticket agencies.
4. References for domestic and international application of handphone 2D barcodes
Handphone barcodes have been relatively maturely applied in Japan, Korea and some other countries. With popularization of camera handphones, people are enjoying convenience of 2D barcodes in network surfing, shopping, information browsing, and information downloading. In our country, handphone barcodes as new issues have raised concerns from the people, and ticketing system applying handphone 2D barcodes have been realized in some large-scale domestic games and movie promotions.
In 2004, Shanghai Unicom and Shanghai Film Art Center successfully realized the handphone barcode ticket application for the movie Kung Fu Hustle.
In May 2005, Shanghai Mobile and Shanghai Film Art Center applied handphone barcode tickets in the experiencing activity held to promote the movie Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. Observation on its in-situ application performance show that ticket checking process can be completed as long as audiences scan their handphones with the ticket checking equipments located at the entrances, saving time in queue for ticket checking, worry on loss of paper tickets, and troubles of visiting to collect paper tickets.
In October 2005, Hu’nan McDonald and Hu’nan Mobile held a promotion of downloading 2D barcode vouchers; Shenzhen Mobile also tested 2D barcode tickets in their Performance Season activities including applying 2D barcode tickets in a communication exhibition held in Beijing in November.
Application in Taiwan
The Taiwan society, because affected by Japan and Korea, started applying handphone 2D barcodes early. In the beginning of this year, Chu-Hwa Telecom and Warner Village published the service of booking tickets by handphone, under which consumers need only book tickets by handphone, and Chu-Hwa Telecom will send a group of barcodes to the consumers in the way of SMS; later as long as the consumers bring the SMS to be scanned by the scanners located at the specific counters, they can collect their tickets and watch movies.
5. Prospects of promotion and application of handphone 2D barcodes
In our country mature level of the whole environment for promotion and application of 2D barcodes still requires more practices. Although 2D barcodes have been widely applied into retails, logistics, ticketing, manufacturing, marketing, pass management, anti-counterfeiting management, document encryption, property management, army logistics, finance and insurance, taxation, medical and healthcare, and education, high price of terminal readers and lack of assorted industrial applications delay promotion of 2D barcodes. Actually as a new issue, handphone 2D barcodes must experience a complicated marketing process and require to have various parties to join and support.
As just mentioned, although handphone reading is sufficiently convenient, mature level of the whole environment is a big challenge. Besides of popularity of camera handphones, powerful promotions by member shops are also very important. Moreover, trans-industry application of handphone code-reading service makes promotion more difficult.
Thus, marketing of handphone 2D barcodes need have mobile operators, handphone manufacturers, 2D barcode reader developers and appliers, the competent authorities of the country, service providers, contents providers, the finance industry, and commercial shops to co-join and co-promote.
Compared with developed countries, promotion and application of handphone 2D barcodes in our country is slightly late, but our country has the resource advantage that other countries have no, i.e., No.1 handphone owners in the world. Statistics show that handphone users in China have launched 0.4 billion and Internet surfers by handphone have launched 90 million, more than that of Japan and ranked No.1 in the world.
Besides, Chinese consumers rely more on handphones, which is a good base for promotion of handphone 2D barcodes. With popularization of camera handphones, powerful promotions by mobile operators and convenient interfaces have encouraged consumers to start pay for value-added services. While handphones may be used as scanners, possibility of expanding application scope of handphone barcodes is strengthened by P2R (point to reader) method.
Foreign survey statistics show that consumers have strong potential requirements in handphone photo-taking and 2D barcode reading engines.
Market prediction on handphone photo-taking and 2D barcode reading engines
The future is a generation integrating information and communication; integration of platform resources will make value-added serviced more developed and handphone 2D barcodes will receive an opportunity for their rapid development. It’s believed that handphone 2D barcodes will have a wide application in our country, which will bring social and economic benefits for development of our information industry and economic construction of our modernization.