Back as promised with an exclusive podcast to connect the dots in the recent raft of announcements and get the inside track on Scanbuy strategy. Indeed, there are a lot of open questions since Scanbuy, a leader in mobile marketing solutions based on barcodes, surprised the industry in early April with the decision to make the specs for the company's proprietary EZcode 2D barcode symbology "globally available." What does this really mean and what structures will Scanbuy put in place to see this through?
These are just a few of the questions I explore with Jonathan Bulkeley, Scanbuy CEO. (Personal thanks to David Javitch, Scanbuy VP of Marketing, for streamlining my request and arranging the podcast, the first such in-depth interview since the announcement.)
To fully understand the significance of Scanbuy's decision, it's important to review the events and announcements that have effectively dealt companies up and down the mobile barcode business ecosystem (Scanbuy included) a new hand of cards.
First came the decision in February by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the patent claims filed by NeoMedia Technologies, a provider of barcode scanning solutions. The move prompted NeoMedia to push forward in March on a patent licensing program and tie up with other vendors (3GVision, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Tag, and NeuStar) in a pilot program based on open standards in a bid to show interoperability between the technologies out there and - more importantly - position NeuStar, a short code registry, as a central clearinghouse in the middle. More about this model and Jonathan's own take in the podcast. April 27, 2009
