Nokia already tried a mobile phone integrated with an RFID reader in 2004. But I think it is fairly safe to say that it flopped. However, I think that having a mobile phone with an RFID reader embedded might just become useful for something like extended packaging.

There are some great videos about what this is here: http://www.gs1.org/productssolutions/mobile/

Extended packaging is great for providing extra information to consumers such as shelf talkers for boutique products such as some of our fabulous NZ wines or more vital information such as allergies.

Read Shaping Thinks by Bruce Sterling.

I found out this week that GS1 have a Mobile Communication group who are looking for groups to get involved with their extended packaging work.

See - www.gs1.org/docs/mobile/GS1_Mobile_Com_Intro.ppt (especially from slide # 28 onwards)

In light of recent misleading consumer information (chocy milk drink power for example), there is a need to authenticate consumer information provided on packaging.

Take for example the plight of NZ honey producers who now have honey labelled under the NZ brands coming in from Australia. For more on honey fraud see http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/business/2399348/Sticky-situation-for-honey-industry

Not exactly,
Nokia debuted the phone ahead of time, but for warehouse shop floor workers. a project was initiated between SAP and Nokia, including a server that would recieve data by air. from a vast warehouse. also when i was in Symbian (now Nokia) i initated a project on developing an application for that phone clubbed with encrpted messaging component, leverating both transaction validation (with RFID reading capability) assumming item level disposable tagging on retail shop floor (every gian supermarket being a well lit warehouse and customer being a warehouse employ checking out his stuf..)the application i proposed had a second half integrated payment module using encrypted SMS serivce...the project is in dormant state with patent pending in US PTO. without much follow up...after that i quit symbian alias nokia.

Thank you for your reply Venkata. I stand corrected. I do hope that perhaps Nokia will bring the project back from the dormant status ;-)

I'd be very interested to hear if anyone is interested in trying this in New Zealand as our group is working is this area.

Judith Symonds
AUT University

now that Nokia chose to officially abandon the patent idea...you are welcome to embark on an acedemic scale POC and incubate the idea into realization...infact i wanted to present it one of those forthcoming gs1 sessions in Singapore and wrote to one joe.horewood in this context, awaiting his reply...

Results matter whoever does it.

All i wanted was couple of symbian programmers, SDK for that phone model' OS, emulator, 6 man months to develop and test. but symbian/ nokia have a market driven approach rather than idea driven.
http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&adjacent=true&locale=en_V3&FT=D&date=20090226&CC=US&NR=2009055278A1&KC=A1

my point was a phone with messaging and rfid reading capability can function like a full fledged POS, "Shopping cart to Parking lot", need not stop to pay (like in traditioal self scanning) thus a complete transaction in a viruall unmanned store... you can email me if u wish to embark on the project.