CoCa-Cola Japan to embed RFID readers in 200,000 vending machines
[From Cmod.jp]
CoCa-Cola Japan announced that they plan to upgrade 20% of their one million vending machines across the nation by 2008. The new vending machines will allow consumers to buy a coke using RFID-chipped wallet phones (and other kinds of digital wallets). The vending machines will also have networking capability to gather data from vending machines for inventory management purposes.
Someone estimated that introducing 200,000 of such vending machines will cost about 40-60 billion Japanese yen (350 - 500 million US dollars). Sounds like a serious commitment.
In the summer of 2004, CoCa-Cola Japan introduced a small number of Cmode2 (see a related entry "Cmode2"), vending machines that communicate with RFID-chipped wallet phones
For those who are interested, Cmode's website has a Cmode2 simulater (click on the bottom box in the left column)
via Cnet Japan, February 15, 2006. (in Japanese)
Posted by konomi at February 15, 2006 02:08 AM | TrackBack