Apparently, brick and mortar retailers aren’t the only ones who are realizing the huge opportunities that mobile shopping provides. More and more stores are building apps for mobile phones that allow consumers to compare prices, find sales, and even complete purchases. This year’s Black Friday saw more mobile search and shopping activity than ever before, and as more people upgrade to smartphones, those numbers are only going to increase. Some online retailers have already made their forays into the world of mobile applications. Amazon.com has an iPhone app that allows users to search for products, add them to wishlists, complete purchases, and track packages. The latest online shopping site to get in on the mobile action is eBay.
The original online auction site has had it rough for a while now. Once the auction craze died down, and the site didn’t evolve its huge membership into a solid community, eBay began losing customers. It also angered a lot of power sellers by increasing fees to make up for sales losses, and many people who had created virtual careers out of selling on eBay moved on to other things, further eroding the site’s online sales market share.
eBay still has one distinct advantage over other retailers’ sites—it’s still possible to buy out-of-production, hard-to-find items. The site has also tried to increase its appeal by offering new items for sale, and not just the things people find in their attics and basements.
The site released a shopping app, eBay Mobile, for the iPhone last year, which the company says has been downloaded more than five million times. Yesterday, just in time for the holidays, eBay released a new iPhone app, eBay Deals. Just like the original app, users can search for items and pay for them direction from their iPhone or iPod Touch. The difference is eBay Deals focuses on items that have no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, less than four hours remaining to bid, and here’s the kicker—no current bids.
Shoppers will still have to be quick on the draw, though, because once this app becomes popular, even those ignored items that would normally slip through the auction cracks will start becoming popular. If you happen to run across something you don’t need, or you’re looking for a little competition, the app also allows you to share what you find on social networking sites like Facebook.
The eBay Deals app covers eight categories, including electronics, computers, and apparel, and is available in five languages—English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.
There is also an eBay app for BlackBerry. In fact, there are two, but be careful. One of them, created by Research in Motion, is free, while the other costs $9.99. Both iPhone apps are free.
Have you used any of these apps, either on the iPhone or your BlackBerry? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!
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