Easing The Pain of Cell Phone Navigation – QR Codes

February 25, 2007 in Mobile Marketing

If you’ve ever tried to type a website address into a cell phone you know that it can be a challenging and time-consuming task. The technology exists to eliminate a lot of that typing. In Japan, a simple point and click with a cell phone is often all that is need to navigate to a site, and there’s no mouse involved either.

She pulls out her cellphone, snaps a picture of a corner of the movie poster on the other side of the tracks and, a few seconds later, she has a list of show times at neighborhood theaters on her handset as well as a review of the film. With one more click, she can watch the trailer and buy tickets.

QR, or quick response, codes are a similar to bar codes except they are square, look a bit like an ink blot and contain much more information. In Japan and South Korea, QR codes are used to link directly to a Web site, as in the case of the subway poster, saving the user the need to type an address on the tiny keypad of the phone. As marketers seek an edge on competitors, QR codes are appearing practically everywhere in Japan.

The codes can be embedded in almost anything, posters, business cards, even fast food product containers. So why hasn’t this technology made it to America and Europe? Likely because carriers can’t agree on a single technology, much like the VHS and Beta war.

Typing on tiny keypads in one of the main obstacles in the mobile marketing front, quite possibly a bigger obstacle than tiny screens. QR code technology can turn the world into an interactive point and click experience. Source