YOU know QR or quick response codes have gone mainstream when they appear in the ample bottoms of Britain’s female beach volleyball champions. The codes, when scanned with mobile phones, direct users to a betting website.
The Daily Mail reported that Zara Dampney and Shauna Mullin have been paid a “substantial” figure to have the QR codes printed on the bottom of their bikinis.
That piece of quirky news illustrates the increasing use of QR codes, which are 2D bar codes that contain data–from text to numerical strings to website addresses. It was developed by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to keep track of vehicle parts.
A study by comScore said that 14 million users in the United States scanned a QR code in June. Of the number, 61 percent were male and 36 percent were in households making more than $100,000 a year.
The study also found that mobile phone users are most likely to scan the codes found in newspapers and magazines.