I have been thinking about mobile barcodes and semacodes lately, in part because there have been articles in the NY Times [premium], Business Week, and a deal announcement from ScanBuy with Telefonica [press release].

I find this enormously cool because it addresses two of my “5 A’s to Adoption” — Awareness and Access. Awareness is increased because big brands can readily include a bar code in their print and web advertising. Access is simplified because you can simply snap a picture of the barcode rather than having to remember a URL or shortcode/keyword. From what I understand, it is enormously successful in Asia.

The applications for this technology run from the URL linking to commerce to games. According to one article, the business model looks a lot like advertising where the bar code’s “sponsor” pays for to rent the bar code and pays each time a consumer traverses the link (i.e., scans or uses the barcode).

Unfortunately, I suspect the biggest barrier to adoption in the States is not the technology and probably not the learning curve. The biggest barrier to adoption is the cost placed on the consumer — data plans. In a direct-to-consumer model, the addressable market will be significantly constrained. This means fewer consumers willing to use the service and fewer brands wishing to take advantage of the technology.

Hopefully, US operators will recognize the potential monetary rewards for these solutions and carve out the data associated with the transactions (or at least the cost of sending the scanned code and getting a first response) or at least treat the first transaction as part of the messaging bundle. Unlike many mobile technologies, I think this one can reach across the generational gaps, but its probably the more youthful tech-saavy market that gets it started, a market that tends to be cost-sensitive.