So you thought QR codes were the future of mobile marketing? Well a new story in Mashable says the status of QR codes is code red.

The story cites a comScore study that concludes that only 14 million mobile-device-armed Americans have ever scanned a QR code. That translates into only five percent of Joe Q. Publicans.

Does this mean the end of mobile scanning? Maybe not. The story asserts that the next mobile frontier is MVS—Mobile Visual Search. MVS allows mobile users to take photos, which are then run through a search engine. So basically, instead of forcing mobile users  to go to their scanning app then capture a QR code, the user can simply snap an image of the item directly (say a billboard), and get taken to the product’s website.

Google has its own version of this, Google Goggles (see video above).

Here’s the question: Are people shunning QR codes because they have no idea what they are, because they don’t want to bother going through the extra QR app step, or simply because they’re not interested in downloading info on the run? If it’s the last one, it won’t matter how people can scan—they just won’t.