Uses
Formerly only for industrial uses, they have in recent years become common in consumer advertising and packaging, because the popularity of smartphones "has put a barcode reader in everyone's pocket" for the first time. As a result, the QR Code has become a focus of advertising strategy, since it provides quick and effortless access to the brand's website. Beyond mere convenience to the consumer, the importance of this capability is that it increases the conversion rate (that is, increases the chance that contact with the advertisement will convert to a sale), by coaxing qualified prospects further down the conversion funnel without any delay or effort, bringing the viewer to the advertiser's site immediately, where a longer and more targeted sales pitch may continue. Although initially used to track parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now (as of 2012) used over a much wider range of applications, including commercial tracking, entertainment and transport ticketing, product/loyalty marketing (examples: mobile couponing where a company's discounted and percent discount can be captured using a QR Code decoder which is a mobile app, or storing a company's information such as address and related information alongside its alpha-numeric text data as can be seen in Yellow Pages directory), and in-store product labeling. It can also be used in storing personal information for use by government. An example of this is Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) where NBI clearances now come with a QR Code. Many of these applications target mobile-phone users (via mobile tagging). Users may receive text, add a vCard contact to their device, open a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), or compose an e-mail or text message after scanning QR Codes. They can generate and print their own QR Codes for others to scan and use by visiting one of several pay or free QR Code-generating sites or apps. Google has a popular API to generate QR Codes, and apps for scanning QR Codes can be found on nearly all smartphone devices.
QR Codes storing addresses and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) may appear in magazines, on signs, on buses, on business cards, or on almost any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the telephone's browser. This act of linking from physical world objects is termed hardlinking or object hyperlinking. QR Codes may also be linked to a location to track where a code has been scanned. Either the application that scans the QR Code retrieves the geo information by using GPS and cell tower triangulation (aGPS) or the URL encoded in the QR Code itself is associated with a location.
In June 2011, the Royal Dutch Mint (Koninklijke Nederlandse Munt) issued the world's first official coin with a QR Code to celebrate the centennial of its current building and premises. The coin was able to be scanned by a smartphone and link to a special website with contents about the historical event and design of the coin. This was the first time of a QR code used on currency.
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