

RedLaser iPhone App reaches 750K downloads, $1M in revenue - andrewhyde
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/15/bar-code-scanning-redlaser-iphone-app-reaches-750k-downloads-over-1m-in-revenue/

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ericb
Most of the apps I see are pretty uninspired. This looks interesting, novel,
and useful. I keep hearing how tough the app store is, but if you actually
"make something people want" is that really true?

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bjplink
I agree. I think it's important that a lot of the people with lackluster sales
or disappointing results should take a step back and be honest with themselves
about whether or not their app is actually worth buying. There is plenty of
moaning and belly aching online from iPhone developers who are upset their
apps don't sell well (such as this semi-famous one:
<http://gedblog.com/2009/09/28/losing-ireligion>) but few thoughts from people
willing to analyze their mistakes and faults.

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warfangle
Interesting. A bunch of bellyaching because a game isn't selling well - and I
can completely understand /why/ it didn't sell well. Heck, it's free and I
still won't install it.

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ahi
$1 million after being top 5 app for 3 months? Urrgh. There's either 2 or 4
(two founders + two employees?) so $250k in revenue for a year's work isn't
exactly huge. It's a big win I'm sure for Occipital--a million dollars is a
million dollars--but if that's the pay off for a home run the iPhone is not a
market I want to play in.

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absmith
This is very inspirational. We work with the Occipital guys on FoodScanner,
and it is cool to see a product rise to the top just by virtue of being kick-
ass.

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augustus
I might be wrong on this but I will say it anyway.

The original idea for this came out of the Google App contest for Android.
This was the idea that won the competition. So the idea was available for
anyone to execute after that.

The red laser team might have come up with the idea independently or just
learned about it from the Google Android contest. I am not sure if the contest
or the app came out first. Someone here might know.

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augustus
I guess I will answer my own question.

The app compareAnywhere won the Android ADC 1 Contest. Here is a link below:
<http://code.google.com/android/adc/adc_gallery/app.html?id=8>

That was in 2008!

You couldn't do bar code scanning on the iPhone until 3GS came out (I think I
am right on this).

So this was an idea out there since 2008. The red laser team were the first
one to execute it on the iPhone 3GS.

I also have high regard for the Google team for correctly accessing the value
of this idea.

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vulpes
RedLaser was released on May 15, 2009. It works with original, 3G, and 3gs
iPhones (although it is faster on 3gs). It was released for the pure need for
that scanning barcodes was very subpar on the iPhone. They were the first (and
I think still the only, most others license their tech) app on the iPhone to
do barcode recognition straight on the phone (no need to take a picture or
send it to a server to be 'read'). Until very recently that wasn't possible
with horribly slow Android SDK.

Read Occipital's story on their blog
[http://occipital.com/blog/2009/08/01/2009-at-occipital-
from-...](http://occipital.com/blog/2009/08/01/2009-at-occipital-from-the-
hangar-to-the-crawler)

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daniel-cussen
Theory: As the internet becomes a more developed medium of communication, word
of mouth will approach being the only way of marketing a product. Quality will
be the only way to deserve word of mouth.

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antidaily
Nice guys. Congrats! Go Blue!

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mzaman_net
that's great

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kw_
This one is bittersweet, as we had the idea, the staff, and the time and money
to implement it, but chose not to, because we substantially underestimated the
size of the market.

Where by 'we' I mean 'I'. It's completely my fault that RedLaser was allowed
to win this market. I killed the project.

It's nice to see that we were at least somewhat correct on the general
goodness of the concept, though.

Congrats, and nice work, guys.

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tk999
It is never too late. If you think some more about the bar code idea. These
are actually couple more ideas related to this that you can expand and it will
be even bigger than redlaser. For example, if you get the bar code for a book,
it will display review and so you can determine whether to buy it or not. On
the same line of thinking, you will find out that you can do even more once
you "identify" the object by the bar code... email me. I am interested in
building something similar.

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iron_ball
I have a barcode scanner for Android that already does the book one. You scan
an ISBN barcode, and it lets you immediately do a "Search inside this book".

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sailormoon
Good for them! A great app, at the right time, on the ideal platform - exactly
the kind of thing that should be a raging success. And now this awesome
developer's got a whole bunch of money, who knows what great things he's got
the resources to do ..

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ticktock
iphone users are so gullible - when you are all said and done with paying for
your iphone and your service contract and your 'redlaser' app, you're over 2k
in the hole, and for what? a 'mobile cuecat'?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat>

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warfangle
Right, because RedLaser totally:

-Uses it's own special kind of barcode -Doesn't let people compare prices locally -Is simply a barcode-encoded URL

/sarcasm

Cuecat was a device that was about a decade too soon. We needed ubiquitous
mobile computing (not just mobile phones, you see) before something like this
could truly come into its own.

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ticktock
I saw the special barcode for the cuecat in the wikipedia article but I don't
remember it being restricted to only those types of barcodes. I'm pretty sure
it worked for any barcode. It also says they were trying to avoid patent
infringement. I suppose that patent has expired (cuecat was 10years ago! wow),
but now that redlaser is worth //evil-voice One Million Dollars!, they may
have to pay the piper. So again - you think it's economical to invest 2k into
a device that lets me save 40 cents on Ketchup?

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jcl
I don't understand your assumption that users are buying iPhones only to use
this app and not, say, to also make phone calls and browse the web. In the
past, people bought iPhones even when this app was not available, and they
paid more.

You should be asking instead if it's economical to invest $2 into an app to
save 40 cents on ketchup. (And, if you plan to make more than five such
purchases, the answer is "yes".)

