The popular iPhone application, RedLaser has been purchased by the company behind the massive online auction site, Ebay. RedLasers is a application that can let people scan the bar codes on products that they wish to buy. Using the WiFi and 3G capabilities of the iPhone, instant price comparisons can be done as soon as the bar code has been scanned.
On Wednesday, the deal was closed and the price of acquisition was not given to the public.
RedLaser is a very popular application, having been downloaded over 2 million times. These are figures that are provided by the app’s creators, Occipital LLC out of Boulder Colorado.
The following is a statement by Mark Carges, the CTO of global product for eBay Marketplaces.
"Mobile enables consumers to make impulse buys and convenient purchases wherever they are, and eBay is constantly innovating to make mobile shopping easy and reduce the friction in commerce,"
The plans are to include the RedLaser into other eBay applications that are already available for the iPhone. eBay hope that this new functionality will provide users with the ability to buy and sell items and a more rapid pace through the online auction site.
By placing the iPhone up to a bar code on an item in the store, the device can detect and record the image. A search is the initialized and if a match is found, the relevant information about that product can be sent to the user. Details about current prices, both on and offline are part of the information provided by this RedLaser.
eBay is planning to increase the use of the RedLaser app by integrating it into more than 7,000 merchants and 200 million listings between eBay.com and Shopping.com. After the announcement of the purchase eBay shares rose $0.05 and closed after falling $0.22 in extended trading.