Feb. 26, 2010

 

There are people who believe that cash and coins are obsolete -- someday, futurists claim, all money will be virtual. Some companies are already preparing for a transition by replacing retail cash registers with mobile devices.

 

Handhelds with credit card readers, running Microsoft Windows CE and often based on rugged devices from Intermec and Motorola, are described as mobile point-of-sale products and have been available for years. There are even Research In Motion BlackBerry options. But then the Apple iPhone came out, and that's changing the game.

 

Checkout devices built on iPhone or iPod Touch units are smaller, cheaper, and more adaptable than their Windows ancestors. Several small companies are joining this trend and they'll soon be followed by an 800-pound gorilla -- hello, Oracle.

 

Big or small, these companies deliver three major benefits to retailers. The technology differentiates the shopping experience, eliminates lines at checkout counters, and minimizes the chances of customers changing their minds.

 

Global Bay Mobile Technologies is one of the companies with products available right now. Its GBmobile Retail Suite has a Windows product and launched Apple software early this year. It uses credit card sled hardware from Infinite Peripherals which also supplies Global Bay's competitors in this field. Global Bay nor those competitors have announced any customers yet -- "There's a whole lot of folks looking at it in the lab," says Kevin Swanwick, director of retail industry solutions. But his company, and the competition, all say they'll announce name-brand customers by this summer.

 

Another challenger is Cornell-Mayo Associates. Its Omniexpress software for the iPod Touch was announced last week. It runs the same code as Cornell's other applications, which helps for companies looking to integrate with legacy installations. CEO Gene Cornell cited luxury apparel and jewelry companies, along with bookstores, who are testing his product but declined to be identified here.

 

Global Bay and Cornell-Mayo are both successful companies that have been in business for many years; neither is a startup. Oracle, however, has the potential to bring mobile point-of-sale applications to the masses. "We really do feel strongly about this... We think it could be as big as e-commerce was," says David Dorf, director of technology strategy for Oracle Retail.

 

Oracle is working with three partners to offer a system by this summer -- Infinite Peripherals dominates the Apple credit card hardware side, Infogain provides backend integration, and Touch2 Systems makes the device software. Touch2's expertise is significant because that company made Apple's own software and is considering versions for other platforms, according to CEO and former Apple employee David Francis. The software can be used for other functions beside virtual checkout, such as paging a manager or processing discounts and returns, he notes.

 

Dorf, in addition to his Oracle job, co-chairs a mobile retailing committee in the National Retail Federation's Association for Retail Technology Standards. The committee formed last November and is currently writing a blueprint for marketing, commerce, and operations. That should also be ready this summer followed by an examination of whether new standards are necessary, he says.

 

How important is this to actual retailers? It's hard to gauge the exclusivity factor by what happens in Apple Stores, because Apple already possessed exclusivity before deploying mobile checkout. Consultant Paula Rosenblum, of Retail Systems Research, has 20 years of experience as an industry technology executive and says that factor is real.

 

"Retailers left to their own devices would just have cash registers and nothing more... they had the edge on you," she says. Now that's changing. "For the first time, the consumer is pushing technology to the retailers. The customer comes in the store and she's got more technology in her hand than the retailer does. Idle hands are the devil's tools. You'll do a price check."

 

That alone is a good reason for retailers to use mobile checkout -- they want to make sales as quickly as possible even if the current economy already eliminates long counter lines.

 

So, while Apple may have a sublime monopoly on gadgets, its retail technology is available to the world.