Dear Sirs,
I read your Mobile Codes Consortium Mission Statement (PDF) with great interest and I think this is a very good initiative.

However from outside this looks right now like a marketing operation by companies already working together. I am curious to know how you see this. Are you interested to let other parties in? If yes, this could be the start of something really interesting.

As Activeprint/Gavitec showed that they can do QR Codes, I think this would be one of the first things to settle. Define the codes to support, the two obvious candidates are the "open" ISO-Standards QR Code and Datamatrix. It is clear that any proprietory code would compromise this "open looking" initiative immediately. As a next step, it would be good to converge on the functionalities every reader must provide.

Finally, once this is settled, we certainly need to find the common ground on the business model.

So that's the first questions I have and I am happy to hear what you are thinking. I would encourage you to have an open discussion.

Best regards
Roger Fischer
CEO, Kaywa


PS: I publish this letter openly because I think it's in the public's greatest interest to have full transparence here.

PS 2: I think there are some great proprietory codes out there and I have great respect for the companies, however this threatens the wide-spread use of mobile codes. If all could converge on one code this would tremendously boost the whole 2D Barcode cause and I am sure that there is still enough space for everyone then.

Nobody will download three or four barcode readers and as we are living in a globalized world, it is no longer possible to have separate codes per country. 2D Barcodes could be one of the best accelerators of mobile 2.0 and have at least the same impact as SMS.

We all should be grateful to Japan's telcos to have shown the example of converging on one code very quickly, but also offering us daily examples of the many possibilities how to use QR Codes.