German company apnoti.com has today launched what it claims is the world’s first mobile price search engine with integrated barcode scanner. It’s an iPhone app called iBARCODE, which enables users to scan product barcodes and find the best prices. It currently only works in the U.S., U.K, Germany and France.
To scan, the user simply holds the iPhone over a product’s barcode. The integrated camera in the iPhone essentially takes a photograph of the barcode, from which the app recognizes the product and finds the best offers on the Internet for it.
These are located via the recently launched real-time price search engine smart.apnoti.com, which the company says has more than 65 million product offerings from more than 10,000 online shops worldwide.
The mobile application recognises the following kinds of barcodes: UPC8, UPC12, EAN and ISBN. These barcodes can be found on a range of products, including cameras, audio and hi-fi devices, computers, furniture, books, DVDs and medicines.
The iPhone app also enables users to store and send product watchlists.
Last year we ran a series entitled The Scannable World: Barcode Scanning In The Real World. But we’re only now beginning to see user-friendly consumer applications that allow scanning of barcodes via mobile phone.
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