The ShopSavvy Wallet was released almost two weeks ago and lots of ShopSavvy users have been using the feature to save LOTS of money. We are currently in the process of turning up new retailers as we speak, but Buy.com has been doing a BUNCH of business with ShopSavvy users. The latest deal was for an Xbox 360 System – 4GB Kinect Bundle for $289.98 with shipping.
Turns out we have a lot of students creating ShopSavvy wallets. If you have ever gone to your local college coop and shopped for books you might have been a little shocked by the prices. Next time take a minute to scan the book with ShopSavvy. You will be surprised by how much cheaper you can get them from retailers who support our wallets. Got a great story about how much you have saved on textbooks using ShopSavvy? Email sales@shopsavvy.mobi so we can share your story to other users.
The app market has exploded. Apple has the world’s largest market with over 571,745 apps in the iTunes App Store. Android is a close number two with 300,000 apps. Nokia is in third place with 50,000 apps in the Ovi store with Microsoft trailing in fourth place with 30,000 Windows Phone 7 apps. Across each of these app stores ShopSavvy is easily in the Top 1% (often showing up in the top ten in most of the app stores). IDC predicts that by 2015 183 billion apps will be downloaded from these app stores (last year 11 billion were downloaded). The market is growing like crazy. According to loyalalytics 26% of users are very loyal – active users who use a new app more than 10 times.
Did you know that ShopSavvy is available on Nokia phones (most of them are located outside of the US)? ShopSavvy is one of the most popular Nokia apps – coming in at number 5 overall in the Ovi Store. We began seeing more and more international traffic about a month ago and now almost 25% of our scan volume is coming from Nokia smartphones outside of the United States.
In the United States Nokia is spending all of its attention on the Windows Phone 7 operating system. ShopSavvy is currently available in the Windows Phone 7 market and once Mango is released next month ShopSavvy will be updated to take advantage of all the new features the new update provides. We hover between the top ten and twenty most popular app on Windows Phone 7 and we are hopeful that after Mango users will be much more excited about the app.
Our new wallet feature allows users to access their contact information to auto-fill their shipping and billing information. Turns out users didn’t want to re-type information that already existing in their address book into our app. iOS users originally requested this feature and we included for Android users a couple of days ago. Cool, right? Nope.
Hundreds of users were angered that we turned on the feature. Their concern was that while we could allow them to select their address information from their address book we could also look at ANY information in their address book. Google’s permission and explanations tend to create this concern. Google is pretty much the Wild West as compared with Apple and their app approval process so Android users are very cautious about what they allow apps to do.
Anyway, instead of trying to explain to the hundreds of folks complaining (out of millions of users mind you) we decided to turn off the feature. You will have to re-type your shipping and billing information now. Please be sure that we never accessed your address book in the past and now that the auto-fill feature is off we STILL can’t access your address book.
iOS users, you still have the auto-fill feature since we haven’t received a single complaint.
Our new ShopSavvy Wallet feature that is new in Android and iOS asks for access to your contact information. Why you may ask? Simple, we want to make setting up your wallet as simple as possible. Whenever you set up your contact info we auto-complete your email address as you type it (we had to access your contact info to be able to do so) and we also allow you to select your billing and shipping information from your stored contact info.
You can be CERTAIN we don’t access your contact information without your involvement. If you don’t set up your wallet we won’t ever look at your contact info. The way Google describes the permission you might be a bit concerned. I think they say something like, “Malicious developers can use this permission to find your house and kill your dog.” Literally, they make it sound terrible. You can be sure the ONLY reason we are offering this feature is to make signing up for the wallet easy.
If you haven’t seen ShopSavvy Wallet here you go:
It is hard to believe, but have been working on ShopSavvy for three years. Back in July of 2008 ShopSavvy won Google’s Android Developer Challenge and the rest has been history. Today our users on Android and iOS will be happy to learn that ShopSavvy 4.5 is available for download (Android) (iOS).
iOS users in Florida have been un-knowingly beta-testing our latest feature: ShopSavvy Wallet (skip the website to buy from within the phone). In essence we have created a secure wallet inside of ShopSavvy that allows a user to store his or her credit card and ship to information inside of their phone. When the user finds a great deal they simply ‘slide to pay’ and ShopSavvy does the rest. This new feature attempts to remove as much inertia from the buying process as possible. Here is a short video demonstrating the feature:
We will be officially launching this new feature in a week or two (if all goes well). The 4.5 update also fixes a number of bugs and improves performance of the app during scanning, product display and list filtering.
Matthias spent a little time crunching some of our numbers for an internal project and came up with some interesting graphics. He built a couple of visualizations that show the breakdown of ShopSavvy users by OS by state. Red = Android and iOS = Blue.
Ever wonder which state has the most Android users versus iOS users? South Dakota. Ever wonder which state has the most iOS users versus Android users? Alaska. Where does your state stand on the Android/iOS question?
Interesting report out of ComScore indicated, “14 million Americans scanned QR or Bar Codes on their mobile phone in June 2011“. The report is sort of confusing as it mixes QR codes and barcodes, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC), the largest technology trade organization in Texas, has named ShopSavvy a finalist in the Emerging Company Horizon Award category as part of the 11th Annual Tech Titans and Titan Fast Tech Awards.
The Emerging Company Horizon Award recognizes a company for outstanding innovation and unique accomplishments through recent breakthrough technology or approaches within the technology and communications industries.
Tech Titans are recognized as outstanding technology companies and individuals in the North Texas area who have made significant contributions to their industries during the past year. The winners will be revealed at a gala at the Hilton Anatole on Friday, August 26. More information about the event is available at www.metroplextbc.org/techtitans.
