QUALCOMM Joins The Mobile Codes Consortium

Pressure continues to mount for industry standards as wireless industry giant QUALCOMM joins the Mobile Codes Consortium (MC2) – a cross-company group setup to promote unified standards in camera cell-phone barcode reading technology.

QUALCOMM plays a vital role in creating technologies that move the wireless industry forward, and they license these technologies to over 100 manufacturers, including virtually every leading telecom equipment and consumer electronics brand name in the world. Leveraging CDMA expertise, the company has become the leading designer and supplier of CDMA chipsets and system software. QUALCOMM's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless™ (BREW™) provides a common platform for different types of wireless devices and applications, enabling hardware and software developers to create new products much more quickly and cost-effectively.

MC2’s aim is to accelerate the adoption of code-reading technologies that will enable users of mobile camera-phones pointed at a printed or displayed 2D barcode, to activate the phone to connect to a particular web-page, download coupons or other digital mediums, make a phone call or send a text message at the click of a button. Based on the widespread adoption of this technology in Japan and the growing popularity of camera-phones in Asia, Europe, and North America, the Mobile Codes Consortium believes that this will have many important applications for both the marketing and public communications industries.

QUALCOMM joins the original founding members Gavitec, Hewlett-Packard, NeoMedia Technologies, Publicis Groupe, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica O2, and KPN to form MC2’s steering group, which is responsible for guiding the organization.