It's funny how many times we get the question "Wow, wouldn't it be nicer if you could scan the barcode using the cell phone and find the product?", and our answer is "Oh, ScanBuy does just that, however..."
Every once in a while we also run into somebody who has heard about ScanBuy and asks if we compete. And again the answer is "in a way yes, however..."
It's the "however" part that makes it really interesting: ScanBuy and other similar services address about 6-8% of the market that we cover. We do everything with a phone call, accessible to anybody with a phone, while they require software download to the cell phone, data connectivity, etc.
Adoption of data plans and using EDGE or similar technologies has been very very slow in the US. WAP applications are not user friendly, are slow, and people are not willing to pay for the data connectivity. In my mind that has a lot to do with the way carriers try to charge for such services. Out of 207.9 million active subscribers in the US, less than 8% use data plans and data services on a regular basis. So that is *not* the market we are interested in. We are after the mass market of cell phone users, people who have made phone calls to automated systems such as their bank or school, and are comfortable with using such services. Most of these people are not comfortable with downloading software to their cell phone, or connecting to the Internet from their cell phone.
What reminded me of all this was a very interesting blog post I saw today, Online Price Comparisons in the Offline World by Sanjay Parekh. His take about the whole data plan issue is exactly what I was talking about.
Thanks Sanjay, and we constantly work on improving the quality of voice. We believe voice is a very underused user interface, and we are committed to create a great voice experience for our users.
Posted by nasser at September 1, 2006 06:02 PM