It's roughly a decade since cell phones and bar codes shook hands and decided they could co-exist. Yet, where is the oh-so-compelling, I-must-have-it-or-I'll-die application? In one sense, cellphone bar codes have been a miserable failure. You probably don't yet have a bar code reading application on your cell phone. That's what I'm talking about. Just where is that app? In every niche technology market that we've seen in the last 30 years there has been something so outrageously better that you had to have it no matter what the cost. The fax machine was one of the first. And the thermal paper was a pain to use and very costly. But we bought it. The portable telephone was so useful that I would spend $1 a minute to use it. My telephone bills in the 80s were running around $1,000 a month, just for the 5lb phone i was dragging everywhere - well, time went by and the cell phone became ubiquitous.
Email has been a killer application as well. First resisted, the grudgingly accepted by most, now indispensable. Interestingly, texting has been widely accepted by many, but a lot of older folks (like my parents) are holding off. I am not sure if its because they haven't migrated to phones with keyboards yet, or if its because their eyesight is not so good.
Some of us think that the bar code scanning and shopping application could be the next Killer App!