They were first introduced for the Christmas 2005 shopping season to handle large queues. Can we say old news?
Those devices have barcode scanners and credit card readers - features which are a must for a portable POS terminal, but are not in Apple's iPhone roadmap. Can we say irrelevant news?
There is no reason for them to use an iPhone, but I'm sure there is a ton of unsold iPod Touch devices they could use.
I assume the functionality shouldn't be too difficult for them to port, as it is likely mostly web based (they aren't storing the store in each device I'm sure), all they would need would be an add-on to scan barcodes and a program to translate them.
I wouldn't expect the iPhone to ever assume a POS type feature set. However, I did find it interesting Apple was using MSFT IP in such an obviously customer facing role.
Oddly enough, I was wandering around in chinatown in sf with some friends during WWDC last June talking about the possibility of building an accessory for iPhone that did exactly that just for fun. Walking around with a small device attached to your iPhone to scan things and swipe a credit card on the spot to sell a product, et cetera.
Sorry, just a bit of deja vu. The Apple retail friends I know all hate these windows mobile devices though..but I doubt iPhone OS would be any better (ughhh I'm hating on 2.x right now, so many problems from both a user and a developer perspective).
Those devices have barcode scanners and credit card readers - features which are a must for a portable POS terminal, but are not in Apple's iPhone roadmap. Can we say irrelevant news?