Some of the largest US retailers are seeking to reduce their spending on new point-of-sale hardware and software and ways to innovate around the Java and internet technologies already changing consumer experiences in other applications such as e- commerce and interactive television. They’ve already convinced Sun and some of the biggest retail suppliers to develop and support a set of Java interfaces called JavaPOS for writing applications that can work on multiple POS devices (CI No 3,330). They also want to POS device vendors to adopt common connectors to help eliminate ‘spaghetti junction’ cabling nightmares which hamper efficiency and raise their costs. As a result, IBM, NCR plus other suppliers and retailers have proposed extension to the Universal Serial Bus standard which specifies design points for developing connectors that are robust enough for use on PC- or NC-based cash registers where drawers maybe constantly slamming against it, and provide the additional power – 12 volts versus USB’s five – that POS peripherals require. Most POS devices are currently attached using RS232 cabling and have all manner of hubs and additional power sources attached. The spec, designed to get rid of cabling clutter, is being submitted to a January 28 meeting of the USB council – which includes DEC, Compaq, IBM, Intel and Microsoft – during which a 1.1 extension to the basic 12Mbits per second USB spec to accommodate hot-swapping of devices. Although most PCs already have USB ports, few peripherals use USB because it isn’t yet supported in software. There’s supposed to be a Windows 95 2.1 beta with USB support available for vendors to create USB-based OPOS devices, but the main vehicles – Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0 are far from shipping. Although there’s no dependency between the proposed specification and JavaPOS per se, Sun needs to support USB in Java for peripherals to work with JavaPOS applications. Sun says it will support USB by mid-year in a Java system services layer. A bunch of retail suppliers including Symbol, Epson and IBM have been demonstrating devices using an early implementation of the USB extension this week in New York. To support the spec, PC vendors will be required to supply motherboards re-designed to supply 12 volts on power to peripherals and new USB driver code will be required for pinters, displays, keyboards and other devices as well as a layer of system-dependent on the register system itself. The installed base may be able to upgrade using some form of RS232-to-USB bridge connector but only where the host POS register has been upgraded with processor and motherboard enhancements. Retail suppliers we spoke to said the spec would likely only apply to new generations of peripheral devices posing backwards compatibility problems for companies such as Gap Inc which is currently installing new register equipment in stores equipped with RS232 connections it expects to be in use for several years. To what extent a retailer will be able to expand customer marketing using the JavaPOS and USB technologies depends on innovations suppliers and application developers can provide as well as the development of common standards in other areas. At the moment, for example, only text and bit-map printing is supported on POS devices because printer vendors have no standard way of implementing graphics. At the moment the customer gets a receipt, inventory is updated and the customer leaves the store.
