For a few years now, Japanese consumers have been using barcode scanning software on their camera phones to automatically surf the Web while mobile. It's an idea that might seem slightly bizarre to North Americans now - but perhaps not for long.

We started to look at the background and context of mobile barcode scanning in Part I of this multi-part series. We'll continue here with a look at how - if at all - the QR code phenomenon might cross the Pacific.

Users in Japan point their cameras at Quick Response (QR) barcodes printed on billboards, magazine pages or bus shelters. The camera captures an image of the two-dimensional (2D) code, automatically decodes the contents - usually a URL - and passes it to the onboard WAP browser, which downloads a page.

Is this one more example of how the Japanese pioneer technologies and modes of communication that later sweep the world? Or an example of a technology that only works in the Japanese market?

Michael Liard, a research director at Allied Business Intelligence Inc. (ABI Research), is inclined to think it's Japan first, then the world. "[The Japanese] are technology leaders," he notes. "Their consumers are very tech-savvy. And they like the next big thing."

Cell phone use is also more prevalent in Japan, and broadband 3G mobile networks have been the norm there for several years, while they have only begun to appear in the U.S. in last 18 months. And Japanese consumers do seem to relish the notion of making their mobile devices as multi-functional as possible, Liard notes.

Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing at Gartner, admitted knowing little about QR codes before we called - a telling fact on its own. But Dulaney made this interesting comment about the two markets in an e-mail exchange.

"The U.S. is a much more difficult area to get the kind of discipline installed to make this happen," Dulaney wrote. "In Japan they have organizations like NTT DoCoMo [the former PTT and largest mobile carrier] that have enormous power to push these things through."

"So while it's a good idea, unless there is major leadership on this initiative [in the U.S.] from someone like the Post Office or the Government, it never happens. Ask yourself why you don't have electronic chips in your banking cards for security. Other geographies have this. We just cannot get agreement."

Still, at least one company, ScanBuy Inc., a U.S. firm that recently launched the first major North American trial of mobile 2D barcode reading in San Francisco, believes the concept can be transplanted - albeit with some slight tinkering to the business model.

For the San Francisco trial, ScanBuy partnered with beta customers Citysearch, a national online publisher of local information guides, and Antenna Audio, a producer of self-guided audio tours.

Citysearch is posting 2D barcodes in the windows of restaurants and other participating establishments - 580 of them. When users with ScanBuy's ScanLife barcode reading software installed on their mobile devices point their camera at a barcode, they're automatically taken to a Citysearch review of the establishment. (The software is downloadable from the company's Web site.)

Antenna Audio's application is more exciting. It's posting barcodes at tourist attractions around San Francisco. Users can scan the codes to automatically launch an audio tour of the site, which plays through the device's speaker or attached headphones.

So the uses to which the technology is being put are similar to those in Japan. QR codes are mostly used there to automate Web surfing so users can get to advertising and marketing materials more quickly and easily. Bus riders can also get location-specific schedule information.

ScanBuy uses slightly different technology, though - EZcode visual codes, a simpler though less data rich technology than the QR codes used in Japan. (Its software can also read QR codes and a third 2D visual code format, Data Matrix.)

The American company, more importantly, is pursuing a markedly different business model. In Japan, it was mainly the mobile carriers - as Dulaney correctly surmised - that pushed the QR code concept.

Any organization, or individual, can generate and post QR codes. The software that carriers pre-install on phones will scan the codes and perform whatever action is encoded in them, without any intermediation.