When did mobile barcode scanning take off? You just missed it!

by david

Every quarter we publish data showing the significant growth in mobile barcode scanning.  This edition is a little different as we are now sharing some hard numbers that really show what we see every day.  Information like how frequently consumers are actually doing this, what are they scanning, and how many marketers are really publishing codes. For example, in the time you read this blog post, 60 unique scans were processed through the ScanLife system!  (Maybe some of you are speed readers, but we are now processing more than one scan per second and a year ago it was 10 per minute).  That comes from both our app, other apps, our codes, and other codes.  Bottom line is that a lot of people are now scanning codes from all over the world.  In fact, we believe there are roughly 45 million people in North America alone that have a code scanning app on their device today. Why is this happening?  People are buying Smartphones in droves, they need easy ways to get more information, tens of thousands of QR Codes are being published in the market, and millions of UPC codes are already on products.  Once you add all of this together, barcode scanning is taking off. Some other key takeaways from this report: - Scans come from over 125 different countries every day. - 2D barcode scanning is currently outpacing the growth of 1D barcodes, a major shift from 2010. - Over 45,000 2D barcodes were generated from the ScanLife platform in the 2nd quarter, a 300% increase from a year ago. - Over 400,000 unique UPC codes, or products, were scanned by the ScanLife app in a single month. - The number of females scanning increased 13%, and the 35-44 age-group increased 8% from the last quarter showing a continued trend toward the mainstream. You can download the full report here.  We hope that this information provides a little insight as to what's happening in the space, and keep scanning!