Good news for mobile startups as The Sun drives mass take-up of QR codes

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Startups offering Quick Response technologies and other services for mobile phones will be heartened by the news that The Sun – the UK’s biggest circulating newspaper – says its new mobile barcode service already has 11,000 users since its early December launch. Readers use a downloaded client application for a cameraphone to scan over the newspaper, thus triggering either a web browser link or some other kind of download, perhaps video. QR services are popular in Japan, but have not taken off in many other markets. The Sun says it will push the QR service hard further in the next few months.

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