In January 2005, flytip.com wrote the following about the japanese LeBron Campaign from Nike:

It's a cool idea, but let's not hold our breath about QR codes popping up in U.S. advertisements anytime soon. Most U.S. mobile phones are still not QR code compatible and WAP penetration amongst users still stands at a lowly 15%.

Two years later we see Nikefootball.com starting with QR Codes.


See also:
Google about Growing Mobile Markets:

From our standpoint, one thing that we’ve been focused on is how the market for mobile has been more advanced in places like Japan. We’ve been very successful. And now we see traffic increasing, advertisers are more interested. We were initially surprised by the level of acceptance mobile got there, but it’s accelerating elsewhere now. We see countries like Germany and France, in general, as the next places for growth, not to mention China and India. A lot of areas in western Europe are getting strong. We’re also focusing on the Middle East and Latin America. Africa is growing quickly.

and

Swiss figures according to Martin Widmer: 23,4% of all swiss mobile phone users are using the mobile internet at least once a month. In comparison to the 55% of daily users in Japan we are still in the early stages.

It would be interesting to compare mobile internet growth with the internet growth. Where is the tipping point? In this regard the Gapminder comparison Internet usage /Phone usage is also very interesting. And let's not forget, Nokia is predicting 1 billion mobile broadband subscribers for 2009.