Do you want .NET with that burger?
Staff | Date: May 23, 2003 | Comments: 1
In a recent survey of food retailers, handheld terminal supplier PSC Inc. found that retailers expect their use of mobile and wireless technologies to expand over the next two years. Regarding which retail areas would benefit most from these technologies, the respondents chose "inventory control" as the top beneficiary, with "customer service" and "wireless POS" ranking third and fourth, PSC said.
The survey also probed key features of the mobile and wireless systems to be deployed over the next two years, PSC said. "WinCE/Pocket PC was ranked first for operating systems, but survey respondents also indicated a continued strong demand for mobile systems with alternative proprietary and open standards operating systems," PSC said. For communications, 67% plan to utilize WLAN capabilities, while over 25% indicated they will use WWAN, PAN (Bluetooth), or VOIP. Additionally, nearly half of respondents (49%) plan to deploy systems with RFID to handle data collection applications, but also pinpointed Mag Stripe, Smart Card, or Debit PIN PAD as anticipated capabilities, PSC added.
PSC said its survey was conducted among the 4,000 attendees of the Marketechnics tradeshow held in February, 2003. Survey participants included senior executives, merchandisers, in-store IT managers, operations personnel, and logisticians of leading food retailers from across the country, 48% of whom were from the grocery sector, the company said.
