here is a QR bookmarklet thing i built two years ago http://miniqr.com/docs/bookmarklet.php but yeah, i know the usage stats, and well the short version is: QR codes are doomed.
your sms approach sounds good, let's see if it takes off.
They seem to be pretty widespread these days as a means to transmit information (mostly URLs) from physical reality to smartphones. I rarely if ever scan them, but that's due to the context: why would I scan the URL on some kind of ad poster?
I saw a QR code that was printed a few feet tall the other day, letting you scan it from across the plaza; that's pretty cool. I still think you could build some pretty neat "worldly" easter eggs by hiding QR codes around cities.
I was passing by a museum last week, and they had some exhibit in the public space in front, and on the small board describing it, there was a QR code for a YouTube video of an actor narrating something related to the exhibit. The fact that the paternalist description of the QR code ("A kind of bar-code for the future [blah blah] go into the "APP store"[sic] and search for [blah blah]...") was more prominent than the code itself detracted somewhat from the feeling of being in the future, but that was the first useful application I've seen in the wild.
Scanning barcodes is (at least right now) neither.