We have just released the latest ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report for Q4 2011. This edition takes a closer look at the busiest quarter of the year for mobile barcodes and some year-end growth comparisons to 2010.

One of the report’s highlights shows the “hockey stick” growth of scans by quarter dating all the way back to Q1 2009. Last year saw a 300% increase compared to 2010. Looking at the chart below, its pretty amazing to see just how far mobile barcode scanning has come these past few years.

The holiday season proved to be another huge period for engaging new users as people are searching for product information and millions of new Smartphones were activated.

Other key takeaways from this report:

• Q4 2011 saw more scans than all of 2009 and 2010 combined
• Over 3,000,000 new ScanLife users were activated in Q4 2011

• Among marketers using the ScanLife platform, the Consumer Packaged Goods industry saw the most scans for the first time ever
• Half of our users report being 18-34, and 60% are male which is consistent with the previous report

A HUGE thank you to everyone to everyone who made these numbers possible!  This data is compiled from our platform users, app users, and other 3rd party apps/code generators.

You can download the full report here.

We’re thrilled to announce the release of the ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report for Q3 2011. This edition marks the one year anniversary of the inaugural report, so we have  focused on how far mobile barcodes have come in the past 12 months.

One of the report’s highlights is the total number of scans processed by ScanLife to date. Through September, we’ve seen over 20 million scans, representing a 400% increase from 2010 during the same time period. This massive number shows just how explosive growth has been for mobile barcodes.

Other key takeaways from this report:

• 2D code activity continues to rise at an impressive rate, as 44,653 2D codes were generated from the ScanLife platform in Q3 of this year.

• Another demonstration of scan growth is around our single largest customer campaign.  A year ago the largest campaign saw 65,000 scans and in Q3 a customer completed a 6-week campaign that netted over 400,000 scans.
• The number of countries scanning in a single day also increased from 77 to 128, a 66% increase.

• Female scans increased by 13% and now represent over 40% of the ScanLife mobile app audience.
• Over the past year, the Grocery (food & drink) category jumped from 14% to 40% in all 1D products scanned.

A big thank you to everyone who made these numbers possible!

You can download the full report here.

We often get asked if people are actually interested in this whole barcode scanning thing. Before we launched ScanLife in 2008, we wanted to know ourselves so we conducted a survey with over a 1,000 people. Results showed us that if we build it, they will come.

Three years later we now see millions of scans a month and over 20% of the Fortune 50 are using 2D codes in one way or another. But, people still want to know if the general public wants to use mobile barcodes. While we publish our quarterly Mobile Barcode Trend Report showing huge growth, we are thankful for other surveys which have been done recently to confirm these trends.

We wanted to keep a running list here of helpful reports on this topic. If you know of any others, please leave us a comment below, and we will add it to the official list.

QR Explosion: Retail and Tech Lead Among 2,300 Mobile Code Advertisers in 2011 [2.12]

18% of scanners make a purchase, and 50% of Smartphone users have scanned a code in the US [12.11]

Compete Smartphone Intelligence Survey

CMB Consumer Pulse – How Smartphones Are Changing the Retail Experience

MGH – 72 percent of smartphone users indicated that they would be likely to recall an ad with a QR code

Stores must reach out and touch more mobile users

It’s been pretty  busy here at ScanLife, so we wanted to share some of what we see every day by publishing our first  ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report.  The report shows the aggressive growth of scanning traffic – up over 700% in 2010!

The report covers both UPC barcodes (people scanning products to get prices and reviews) and 2D barcodes that you would see in magazines, outdoor ads, etc.  Interestingly, our traffic is split 50/50 right now which shows that people really just want information quickly and easily – they don’t care what kind of code – it’s all about what they back in return.

When looking at UPC scanning, the results are also vary widely.  Our system shows users online prices to help save you money, but the top two categories are from every day products like health/beauty and food.  One would say that is just because they’re “playing around”, but guess what – they are actually buying these products also!  We see purchases from shampoo to diapers to books which shows that any category is open for business.

Lastly, we looked at demographics and location which come voluntarily and anonymously from hundreds of thousands of our app users.  This also showed that this is much broader than you would think.  Half of all respondents were 35-54, and almost half had income levels of over $100K!  Of course this also reflects that most of our users have SmartPhone devices like Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone.

We look forward to sharing more of these reports in the future , and can’t wait to see what’s next for mobile barcodes.  Keep scanning!

Download the full report:  ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report