That's not correct. Firstly, it had taken off in Japan a long time ago. Blackberry supported it in fact and I remember being at an intern recruiting event where the recruiter was smug about QR codes being on the cusp of mass adoption (being more than a decade early is wrong for this kind of stuff).

The problem was that the UX sucked. The UX today still kind of sucks but it's infinitely better than what was available when QR codes were first around by being integrated into the camera app.