Author: Julie Campbell

The near invisible quick response barcodes are looking for Chinese local investors and partners.

Israeli startup, Visualead, has just announced that it has launched its near-invisible QR codes in China, and that it is now looking for investors and partners in that country.

These barcodes are unique because of the fact that they are nearly invisible but highly scannable.

This helps marketers to overcome their current concerns with the fact that QR codes take away from the visual appeal of their advertisements. Visualead’s launch in China has been a very strong one as it began its entry to that market by becoming the winner of the Growth Stage Competition at a worldwide mobile internet conference last week.

The near invisible QR codes company is very positive about its launch in China and its successes so far.

According to Uriel Peled, the CMO of Visualead, “It’s very exciting”. Now that the company has won a quite a notable award, it intends to continue to make a big splash in the country by helping brands, marketers, and others to apply its QR codes technology in order to be able to improve communication between them and consumers in China.

Visualead was first launched in January. It functions by giving everybody the chance to generate QR codes through the uploading of a photo onto the website, merging the image and the barcode together. This is considerably different from the older versions of the barcodes which were limited to a black and white square made up of pixels.

The benefit of the Visualead nearly invisible barcodes, says the company, is that their highly improved visual appeal will help to encourage consumers to scan them. This is because they are more attractive and are therefore more likely to build engagement with the people who see them and who carry smartphones.

Though the generation of the QR codes is a part of a free service, Peled has said that the company has intentions to broaden its premium service. That is a paid version geared toward small businesses and enterprises, which can buy their barcodes for use on virtually any kinds of print materials, including retail products, banners, and brochures.

The latest data from BI Intelligence has shown that shoppers are increasingly adopting this channel.

The most recent report from BI Intelligence has revealed that m-commerce made up 11 percent of all online shopping throughout the holiday season in 2012, which is a staggering increase over 2010, when it comprised 3 percent of the total.

This amount currently represents about $18.6 billion in consumer spending, not including travel purchases.

This m-commerce growth, according to BI Intelligence is, in part the result of the growing popularity of the channel. The company has predicted that by the end of 2013, its share of the total will have increased to 15 percent of all online purchases.

The report not only examined the proportion of m-commerce, but also examined the cause of its growth.

The BI Intelligence report not only provided the figures regarding the growth of the channel, but it also looked into many of the latest m-commerce trends that can help to explain why the growth is occurring in the way that it is.

The following are some of the reasons that the report used to explain the trend toward m-commerce that is leading it to grow:

• At the moment, more than half (54 percent) of adults in the United States currently own smartphones and about a quarter of American adults own tablets. The report predicts that in three years, there will be more tablets than there are PCs among American consumers. By the end of the year 2016, the worldwide sale of tablets will have reached 450 million.
• Data is already indicating that there is more traffic heading to m-commerce websites than the actual percentage of its penetration. That is, while 25 percent of American adults own tablets, those devices account for 40 percent of the traffic to those sites.
• Almost 50 percent of all smartphone owners between the ages of 12 and 17 years old use that device as their primary connection to the internet. Therefore, among younger consumers, it is more natural for them to use m-commerce as a primary online shopping channel than it is for older consumers.