Last week we announced QR Code scanning support for ShopSavvy (3.6 on Android) and got a lot of attention at the CES show.  About an hour ago my dad posted a question to my Facebook page asking, “Ok, what is a QR code?”  I guess most of you have no idea what a QR Code is or why it might be helpful to have ShopSavvy scan the code.  I will try to help.

QR codes are two-dimensional codes (as seen on the right) that were created by a Japanese company called Denso-Wave back in 1994 to track vehicle parts during manufacturing.  Unlike one-dimensional barcodes that only contain eight to seventeen digits, QR codes can contain up-to 7,089 numeric characters, 4,296 alphanumeric characters, 2,953 binary bytes or 1,817 Japanese characters.  This data storage was VERY important PRIOR to the Internet.  QR codes were invented about the same time as the World Wide Web and as a result the value of having an ‘un-connected’ barcode that held significant data became less and less important.  Sure QR codes proliferated in manufacturing, supply chain applications and shipping, but outside of Japan and Korea their use in consumer applications has been almost non-existent.

So why aren’t they popular in consumer applications outside of Japan and Korea?  Largely because if you can scan a one-dimensional barcode with an internet connect device brands, manufactures, retailers and advertisers have more control.  They can provide different information to consumers based on time of day, day of week, season, location of user and so on.  With a QR code that must be printed they have no control – whatever data existed at time of printing is the data that will be in the QR code.  Why would anyone bother to create a code that couldn’t mean different things for different people?  You can’t put a price in the QR code – because prices change.  You can’t put product recall data into the QR code – because product recalls happen AFTER printing of product packaging.  Of course you CAN insert a URL into a QR code and direct a user to a webpage – but you can do the same with a one-dimensional code and almost 100% of products ALREADY have a 1D code. So why are QR codes big in Japan?  I think the primary reason is that they can contain 1,817 Japanese characters (Kanji/Kana).  Almost ALL mobile phones in Japan have the capability of reading QR codes.  NTT Docomo established the de facto standard for encoding URLs and contact information – all using Kanji/Kana.

Previously I have written about why we didn’t support QR codes.  Recently Google announced their Google Favorite Places program whereby Google mailed QR code window stickers to something like 190,000 local retailers.  These QR codes are tied to Google local search feature and allows the retailer to include coupons and special offers to users who scan the codes.  In light of this new feature and its connection to retail shopping we decided it was time to support QR code scanning.  ShopSavvy will now scan all 1D and 2D barcodes.  Try scanning the code to the right (it is my contact info) and feel free to let me know how you like the new changes in ShopSavvy for Android (iPhone QR scanning support coming later this month).