Chapter 3: The Rise of the QR Code
Despite the widespread use of barcodes, businesses, including supermarkets, faced problems due to their limitations. They created financial burdens due to expensive equipment and hampered factory production lines due to inefficiencies.
The advent of QR codes, a versatile technology, has solved the inherent problems of barcodes and has therefore gained popularity. QR codes can encode about 7,000 digits and even Kanji characters, which contain a huge amount of information. They can also store up to 200 times more data than traditional barcodes, and their reading speed is 10 times faster than barcodes.
The developers named it QR code, which stands for quick response. At first, QR code was used primarily in car factories to keep track of all parts and cars. The technology was able to process more data and offer faster, so it was widely adopted for information processing across industries.
This is how QR technology rose to prominence and revolutionized digital access and information sharing.
Chapter 4: Rediscovering the QR Code with Smartphones
Smartphones rediscovered the purpose of QR codes when the technology became freely available to the public in 2000. This was possible thanks to Denso Wave's generous decision to make the technology available and accessible to the public. Thus, Hara and Denso Wave did not own the patent rights to QR codes.
Hara and Denso Wave never anticipated that the technology would be widely adopted by everyday individuals. In a Microsoft quote , "Hara and Denso Wave foresaw the future of QR codes in other industrial settings, but they did not anticipate their popularity among small businesses and everyday individuals."
Sharp Corporation, a Japanese mobile phone manufacturer, first integrated a QR scanner into its phone in 2002, paving the way for everyone to carry one in their pocket. Eventually, every smartphone manufacturer had a camera in their mobile phone—the perfect teacher database technology for a QR code reader.
In 2017, Apple introduced a native QR code reader on iPhones using the camera app as an update to September's iOS 11. This was a revolution in the history of QR codes, as over 700 million iPhone users around the world could now use the technology at their fingertips.
For the first time, QR technology was available to the masses. Many iPhone users freely accessed it, marking the beginning of the era of public access. However, it was not a full-fledged celebration, as iPhone users were mainly concentrated in the US and Europe.
QR codes have become widely available to people in Asia and Latin America due to the increasing integration of the technology into Android phones. The rise of smartphone users around the world and mobile internet access for everyone has led to the wonders of the intelligent digital age.
Chapter 5: Using the COVID-19 Pandemic Consolidated QR Code
Since late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has spared no one and affected millions of lives around the world. The spread of the virus has spiraled out of control, and governments around the world have begun to implement strict regulations to limit the spread, such as social distancing practices to avoid physical contact.