SmartStores The future of retail

Apple has filed a sweeping patent application for a technology suite designed to provide iPhone users with a broad range of real-time product information, special offers, sales opportunities, and related services in stores, restaurants, and other retail establishments.

The filing also points to the inclusion of near-field communication (NFC) technology in upcoming iPhones.

The system described relies primarily on two methods of obtaining information on products or services: a reader using the aforementioned NFC tech to get data from an RFID or its equivalent placed on a product, owners manual, point-of-sale device or display, and the like; or a matrix bar code to be read by the iPhone’s camera and decoded by an iPhone app or iOS element. Both an RFID or a matrix bar code, of course, would need to be placed on the product by their manufacturer.

Product information could also be provided by an internet connection, in an email message, or an in-store kiosk.

A host of examples are listed in the 83-page filing. Examples include:

• Bellying up to a the bar in a pub and checking out the event calendar for that establishment
• Walking down a supermarket aisle and reading recipes related to items on the shelves, complete with instructional videos
• Scanning the packaging of a movie DVD and being shown that movie’s trailer, snippets of its soundtrack, and online reviews
• Sitting in a coffee shop and purchasing the tunes that’s being played over the shop’s sound system
• Dining in a restaurant and receiving nutritional information about your meal
• Receiving the answers to problem sets in textbooks or reviews of novels in, uh, novels
• Scanning software packaging and watching a video tutorial
• Scanning magazine inserts and blow-in cards that provide info or discounts on the products advertised

Source: The Register

Editors Note:
Most of these examples seem to be obvious applications for RFID and mobile devices in general, so I am not too sure what Apple is actually protecting with this patent application. Most of these ideas have been known and talked about for years and even a decade or more.

Among the ever escalating numbers of smartphones available in the US, Apple’s iPhone still leads the way in those as well as other mobile application areas, noted David Dorf, director of retail technology at Oracle.

The more than 10,000 iPhone apps online in Apple’s App Store already include some photo-oriented “vision” apps. Examples include an app from Sears which helps you to locate a product in stores based on an uploaded product photo, and one from Wal-mart that allows you to use a picture of a room in deciding what size HDTV to buy.

With the recent entrance of Motorola’s Droid and Google’s Nexus One, for instance, apps of this kind are also headed to the open source Android platform, said speakers in an NRF panel session.

Developers are at work, too, on location-aware apps that will use GPS to send you discount coupons based on where you happen to be, and on augmented reality apps combining a mobile phone’s camera view with multiple layers of related information.

Meanwhile, commuters in New York City and San Francisco have been taking part in NFC trials involving the use of software-based token applications that bill their credit cards for mass transit use.

Participants have been able to hop aboard trains and subway cars simply by waving their phones in front of contact-less NFC readers near turnstiles in mass transit stations, said Sahir Anand, research director for retail, hospitality and Consumer Product Group practice at the Aberdeen Group analyst firm.The United States has long lagged behind some other parts of the world — most notably Japan and the Nordic countries — in mobile shopping and mass transit apps, pointed out Mohammad Khan, president and founder of ViVOtech. But with the advent of new smartphones and NRC, the US is getting poised to “leapfrog ahead,” Khan contended.

Read more: betanews.com