Have you ever scanned a QR code? If you have, did you get a discount on something? Did it reveal some cool information? Did it give you an offer you just couldn’t refuse?

It’s clear that QR codes are increasing in popularity, but to be truly as viral and useful as many companies hope they will, they have to become more useful.

We have an example from the Pingdom office today of a QR code that doesn’t deliver any value to the customer at all. Read on to find out more.

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We have pointed out China’s amazing potential before on this blog, and we have also made detailed comparisons between China and the USA.

But with over 1.3 billion people, China has “only” 77 million smartphones, which, per capita, is far behind many other countries around the world, including the USA.

So let’s be honest, haven’t you wondered what if China had the same number of smartphones per capita as the USA?

Let’s play a game of “what if.”

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Pingdom’s Mobile Podcast is a weekly show about Internet, web, and mobile stuff. In this show we covered a number of topics, including The mobile web in numbers, Symbian is still top mobile OS, Apple’s App Store generates 6x the revenue of Android Market in the US, Ice Cream Sandwich & General Android post-ICS? End of Fragmentation?, Unmodified Holo theme now a requirement for devices with Android Market access, RIM PlayBook Now Available for $199 in the US, and more.

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As we’re quickly approaching the end of 2011 we take a last look at what the year for mobile operating systems has been like.

Would it surprise you to know that Symbian finished 2011 stronger than it started the year? The much-maligned operating system is still number 1, ahead of Android, iOS, and the others.

Read on to find out more.

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There can’t be much doubt that the mobile web is exploding in popularity. From the first mobile web access offered commercially with the Nokia 9000 Communicator phone in Finland in 1996, things have moved fast.

Today we’re seeing increased sales in smartphones and tablets, faster mobile data connections, apps, and more. Basically, we’re accessing Internet services more and more from something that is not a PC.

We’ve put together some numbers to attempt to show a picture of what the mobile web was like so far in 2011, how it is has developed, and perhaps take a peek into the future as well.

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Mobile Internet adoption and speeds are increasing across the world. Sweden is one example of a country where Internet connections – mobile as well as fixed – are plentiful and fast.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) is in charge of monitoring the electronic communications and postal sectors in the country. In the latest report from PTS on telephony and the Internet, which covers the development through the the first half of 2011, we found some nuggets of information in terms of mobile data subscribers and traffic we felt worthy of a comparison to what’s happening globally.

These numbers should also be a good indication of how rapidly mobile Internet use is ramping up in other, similar countries (for example the rest of Scandinavia).

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Even though consumer spending this upcoming holiday season may be “careful and controlled,” there’s no doubt that we’ll be struck by the spirit of giving again. If you’re a retailer – online or offline – by all accounts, customers will this year use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to find your store and your products, more than they have before. So get ready, build a mobile web site if you don’t have one or improve the one you already have.

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There has been much said about the imminent demise of RIM’s Blackberry in the face of the unstoppable momentum of Android (and previously the iPhone). But here’s an interesting piece of information: According to data from Statcounter, Blackberry is growing just as fast as Android, at least in terms of global Web usage. Blackberry users have doubled their Web presence in the last 12 months.

So while some recent reports say that Blackberry is falling behind in the mobile race, perhaps that is not the case after all.

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Google has made great strides with Android, and a ton of developers have flocked to the growing mobile platform. Not everything is rosy, though. One major concern among developers is that piracy levels are very high on the platform.

Google is of course not oblivious to this and recently announced plans to combat piracy with DRM methods that app developers can include in their apps. But there is one problem that is arguably much more problematic for Android developers when it comes to getting paid for their apps, and it isn’t getting nearly as much attention as we think it should.

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Google has been dominating the search engine market for years, but at least there are some competitors that have a few percent each.

But if you look at mobile search, i.e. search on mobile devices, which is more or less the smartphone market, Google is utterly crushing the competition to a level that it’s never managed in the regular search market.

Just look at this very telling chart, showing Google’s overall search and mobile search market shares in relation to those of Yahoo and Bing, its two closest rivals. (These are global stats.)

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