QR code is starting to become popular in US. I just noticed one QR code in this month Wired magazine - typically more than 20 QR codes in Japanese magazines, but it is just a start of a new rising trend in US.

It seems QR code is currently getting popular in new areas like airline ticketing services using mobile devices than traditional publishing medium. A QR code encoded with boarding pass information is sent to a passenger’s handset and  then airport security scans the QR code for verification. According to the article in TechCrunch, the offerings of QR code ticketing service increased 1200% year-over-year. 1200% a year!

I am not interested nor impressed by this type of QR code usage - although it is a great service - which merely uses a fraction of what it can do and only uses one aspect of it - being able to encode some information to be scanned and verified by custom QR code readers. It’s not new.

I am more interested in making the QR code available everywhere and doing something interesting with the data in it. It is a huge opportunity for those of whom understand the current issue. The problem of the current QR code usage in Japan and US (although just started) is that no one is doing something really creative and the usage is too broad. If you scan a generic QR code on, for example, a magazine ad, it just redirects you to some websites for more information or for some coupons. Also people just don’t know what to expect by looking at it and even don’t have any clue which QR code readers to use… This is a root cause of the problem. There have been quite a lot of effort to create good and fast generic QR code readers, but not too much effort on doing something with the data encoded in it.

Thus, I predict the next big thing in QR code revolution would be “Branded QR Code”.  What I mean by “Branded” is this: if you look at Apple logo, you know exactly what to expect. Search ->Google, Social Network ->Facebook, Realtime ->Twitter, LBS -> Foursquare, PayPal -> Payment, etc.

One good example would be “PayPal Branded QR code” -> by looking at the QR code, people know what to expect - Payment.

It isn’t a question of if, but when and who.