Image recognition-based mobile marketing solutions provider SnapTell announced it has been acquired by Amazon.com subsidiary A9.com. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get solution enables consumers to receive real-time reviews, prices and product information from retailers and advertisers by snapping and uploading photos of print advertisements, outdoor billboards, brand logos, product packaging, branded cans, bottles and wine labels--photos are then matched against SnapTell's image database, and the appropriate information or offer is transmitted to the user's handset.
As noted [1] late last year, an Amazon/SnapTell deal seemed inevitable given Amazon.com's increasing push into the m-commerce segment. In December 2008, Amazon even launched a new iPhone application allowing users to browse product inventory, including merchandise available from retail partners like Target and Macy's; the app includes an experimental feature, Amazon Remembers, enabling consumers to snap and upload a photo of any product they encounter during the course of their day-to-day activities, with freelancers in the online retail giant's Mechanical Turk program doing their best to match the product to items the company sells and delivering results within five minutes to 24 hours--in other words, doing what SnapTell's own iPhone app, Explorer, does automatically and within seconds.
For more on the Amazon/SnapTell deal:
- read this release SnapTell blog entry [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/year-ahead-mobile-content-predictions-sure-go-wrong/2008-12-23
[2] http://snaptell.typepad.com/snaptell_blog/2009/06/snaptell-has-been-acquired-by-a9com-a-subsidiary-of-amazoncom.html