An average Indian smartphone user spends about two-and-half hours a day on the handset, dedicating more time to entertainment and internet activities than to voice calls and text messages, says a survey.According to a Nielsen-Informate Mobile Intelligence survey, Indian smartphone user spends 72 per cent of the time on activities such as gaming, entertainment, applications (apps) and internet related content.The remaining 28 per cent of the time is used for voice calls and text messaging, it added.India’s rapidly growing mobile user base presents marketers and businesses with an opportunity to improve the precision with which they reach out to the new Indian consumer. In a cluttered media landscape smartphones are a boon when it is used as a media vehicle. There are many apps available which may act as catlayst to improve the consumer experience. QR Code is one such significant application which can transform the realtime consumer experience. A QR Code (it stands for "Quick Response") is a mobile phone readable barcode that's been big in Japan forever, broke into Europe & US a while back, and is now getting traction in India.In its simplest sense think "print based hypertext link" - simply encode a URL into the QR Code and then point a mobile phone (or other camera-enabled mobile) at it. If the device has had QR Code decoding software installed on it, it will fire up its browser and go straight to that URL. But it doesn't stop there - a QR Code can also contain a phone number, an SMS message, V-Card data or just plain alphanumeric text, and the scanning device will respond by opening up the correct application to handle the encoded data appropriately courtesy of the FNC1 Application Identifiers that are embedded in the encoded data. The technical specifications for a QR Code are set down in the ISO-18004 standard so they are the same all over the world, and the only significant variations from one QR code to another (apart from the data it contains) is the number of modules required to store the data. A Version 1 QR Code is a 21x21 array of data elements with the array increasing in size by 4 modules for each increase in version number. The largest standard QR Code is a Version 40 symbol that 177x177 modules in size and can hold up 4296 characters of alphanumeric data (theoretically) compared to 25 characters for a Version 1 QR Code. While there is still a lot of scope for improvement, the resolution of average present-day camera-enabled portable devices is such that the size of the data modules (dots) on a QR Code of Version 5 or above (37x37) presents a real risk of incorrect decoding of the symbol by the device. When creating a QR Code intended for use with mobile phones and PDA's it's best to stick to Version 4 or lower, and a QR Code symbol of at least 2cm (0.85inches) across. To make things a bit more robust, the QR Code also contains its own error correction data, internal orientation calibration and self-alignment markers. In this way it doesn't matter whether the QR code is upside down or wrapped around a curved surface, the message will still get through. BrandAnthem highly recommends its client for going for QR Code embedded communication. Even we are embedding the QR Code in clients visiting cards for a real time experience(Please see the below image) There are many success stories when QR Code influenced purchase decissions. TESCO used the QR Code for its advantage in Korea(See the video link).As we see the future of India moving towards smart phones, we believe marketers to implement QR Code strategy as a communication plan through smart phones.
