QR codes see considerable progress in China

The smartphone friendly barcodes are being noticed by Chinese device users and scans are rising.

Though there has been some doubt as to whether or not QR codes would ever fully catch on, 2013 seems to be presenting some very promising trends worldwide, with the latest coming from China.

The National Art Museum of China, for example, provides information about its pieces through barcodes.

For this, and hundreds of other reasons, smartphone users in China are scanning QR codes as never before. This is the result of a company called Beijing Lingdong Kuaipai Information Technology Co., among others. This was one of the first organizations in the country to develop software that would allow smartphones to scan the barcodes. Though it was first established in 2010, it wasn’t until 2012 that their scanning business truly started to take off, said Wang Pengfei, the CEO.

It was the sudden and vast penetration of smartphones in China that helped to boost scans of QR codes.

According to Wang, “The popularity of smartphones and the development of mobile internet services in China has provided a mature business ecosystem for QR codes. More people are becoming familiar with them.”

A leading mobile phone and internet service provider, Tencent, released its own scanning service for QR codes by way of Wechat, last year. That launch over the smartphone based voice messaging and text service drew more than 200 million users. It provides smartphone owners with the opportunity to scan barcodes printed in shopping malls, at restaurants, and in movie theatres in order to obtain coupons or membership cards.

Tencent’s CEO, Ma Huateng, explained that QR codes will become a very important technique that will allow businesses to take their first meaningful steps into the mobile internet marketplace. He pointed out that as a growing number of online giants, such as Baidu and Alibaba, join into the barcode business, it will vastly boost the use of the barcodes. From there, he believes that the trend will increase as more companies will join in and more opportunities for savings and loyalty programs will be made available for consumers.