Amazon expands mobile/iPhone capabilities.
I haven't seen this covered in the ecommerce World, but it is in the startup press. Earlier this week, Amazon acquired the startup Snaptell. Snaptell had a free app for the iPhone and Android that allowed you to take a picture of a random product, have it identified and then price shopped online.
The amount of the acquisition wasn't disclosed, but snaptell had raised $4m so I suspect the valuation was at least 2x that if not more.
Amazon already has a great mobile app with a similar 'remember' feature. In a WSJ piece, an Amazon spokesperson said:
Amazon will continue to "work in innovations in search technologies and enabling visual shopping on a range of mobile devices and platforms," said a company spokeswoman. "It's very early days for image recognition based search technology and we believe there is a lot of innovation in visual product search ahead of us."
If you want to read/learn more here are some resources:
- Snaptell blog
- TechCrunch
- WSJ article (subscription required)
SeekingAlpha Disclosure- I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor
