QR Code Usage Among European Smartphone Owners Doubles Over Past Year

by Alex from London

ComScore, a leading digital business analytics company recently released an overview of mobile commerce and QR code usage across the five largest European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) following the release of a similar study in the US three months ago. The study showed that scanning QR codes among European smartphone users grew by 96 percent in the past year to 17.4 million users for the three month average period ending July 2012. This represents 14.1 percent of the total smartphone audience. With 18.6 percent of the smartphone audience scanning QR codes, Germany ranked first in terms of consumer adoption of the technology. In Spain, QR code scanning increased by 9 percentage points to 16.0 percent, making it the fastest growing European market and the second biggest in terms of consumer adoption. These results complement our own research (available here) based on data from millions of users from over 150 countries around the world. Nor do they come as a surprise, given that during the Olympics ScanLife QR Codes generated 36% more connections than Foursquare check-ins.

Product information was by far the most popular result of a QR code scan, with nearly 3 in 4 scans being directed to this result across all EU5 markets. Over 1 in 4 scans resulted in event information, making it the second most popular result across EU5. 19.4 percent of QR code scanners received coupons or offers, while 13.4 percent received application downloads. 12.1 percent of this audience also received charity/cause information in EU5.

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