The new network citizens
An interesting announcement from KDDI regarding RFID technology: the Japanese operator is selling a Bluetooth RFID reader which communicates with mobile handsets to relay information from RFID tags. The first deployment is targeted at enterprise and industrial customers, but it is further evidence of the mobile network being extended to a new generation of citizens: physical objects and machines.
This is a macro-trend which I’ve been observing for some time and the pace of adoption is rapidly increasing. It will have huge implications for the user experience as the industry struggles to understand how to enable effective person-to-person and person-to-machine communication in the same device.
The japanese government has required food manufacturers to place RFID tags on all food partly so that users can access information about the food from their mobile phones.
Professor and author of Mobile Disruption, Tokyo Japan
Thanks for the comment Jeffrey: I didn’t realise this was now a government requirement. It is going to be fascinating to see how the mobile experience evolves when handsets can be used to discover information about the world around us, whether that’s food or advertising or transport or any other physical object.