Mobile barcodes are HOT: ShopSavvy gets 2.15 million downloadsPublished on Wednesday, December 8th by Cian O' Sullivan This holiday season has seen an undeniable boom for mobile shopping – and the pull of barcode-based services seem irresistible as people get more entrenched in shopping season. Today, price comparison application ShopSavvy reports that it has been downloaded 2.15 million times during November alone – the best month it has had since it launched in 2008.
What’s ShopSavvy?
ShopSavvy is a deceptively simple service, and it works like so:
With the ShopSavvy application running on your phone, you scan the barcode on a retail item. ShopSavvy then runs automated searches on a large number of services, and presents you with a detailed list of other prices you can get the item at – both on-line, and in other retailers. You can then order the item on-line if you want. If there is a local retailer with better prices, ShopSavvy will direct you there. That’s the basic service. At the start of November, ShopSavvy launched an updated version with a ton of social features added – you can see our report on that here. The new social features were added to make the app more useful and appealing for Christmas – and as the downloads show, it seems to have worked for them. Between November 1st and 30th, the app was downloaded 1.4 million times on iPhone and 750,000 times on Android. On iPhone, 1 million of those downloads were by people updated to get the new social features, with the other 400,000 being completely new users.
What we think?
It’s not just ShopSavvy that’s doing well. Mobile barcodes in general are seeing great use this Christmas. Yesterday, ScanLife reported a massive spike in usage over Black Friday and we’ve seen more and more instances of barcodes being used for charity this season. Smartphones are really starting to gobble up the mobile market share, and people are increasingly aware of just how useful their devices can be – and what kinds of services are already available for them.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
