UROVO, which makes enterprise mobile devices and barcode and payment hardware, has launched two products aimed at the shop floor rather than the checkout: the SP35 Personal Shopper and the U100 Price Checker. The company's chief technology officer, Zhang Bo, said self-service is moving out of its fixed spot and into the shopping trip itself.

The SP35 is a shopper's device. It can use ultra-wideband positioning to help someone find and navigate to a product, scan items, and take contactless payment through NFC, with software that turns the device into a payment terminal. The U100 is a tablet-style unit on a stand, with a 10.1-inch screen showing standard, promotional and member prices, optional radio-frequency identification for reading several items at once, and a sensor that wakes the display as a shopper approaches.

What the shopper gains, and what the retailer does

The design assumes a shift retailers have been slow to make. Handing out devices lets customers scan as they go, which cuts the queue at the till and gives the store a record of what was picked up and put back. Neither product is new in kind; handheld shopping devices have existed for years, and the change here is that price-checking, once a fixed pole in an aisle, is now something a store can hand out or leave on a shelf.

The release carries no price and no availability date, and its promised benefits of less staff intervention and better service are assertions rather than measurements. UROVO, founded in 2002, will show the pair at a retail trade fair in Paris in September.

Whether shoppers want to carry a retailer's device, rather than use the phone already in their hand, is the question a launch cannot settle.