This is turning out to become quite the trend.
Yesterday, we reported that the MindMaker iPhone application was acquired, and today we learn that Coupons Inc has acquired one of the most popular lifestyle programs for the iPhone / iPod Touch, Grocery iQ (link to iTunes App Store).
Grocery iQ is a neat grocery shopping application published by Free State Labs that comes preloaded with a database over 130,000 items commonly found in supermarkets across the U.S., enabling users to search them and organize personal shopping lists by store, aisle, buying history, favorites, as well as customizing item sizes.
The application also lets you store your favorite items and shopping history. Its current list price on the iTunes App Store is $0.99 and the app is ranked #1 in the ‘Lifestyle’ category with an average rating of 3.5 stars and over 700 reviews.
Coupons Inc in turn operates Coupons.com, a digital coupon platform that attracts about a dozen million unique visitors a month, and aims to complement that business with a mobile service.
The idea behind the acquisition, for which no specific deal terms were disclosed, is for Coupons.com to be able to match personal grocery lists generated with Grocery iQ with relevant, targeted coupons and offer multiple ways for consumers to redeem them straight from their mobile phone.
In short, an acquisition that makes perfect business sense (more like a no-brainer actually) and another boost for the iPhone and its application platform.
Part of what is driving the trend is pressure from VCs for their portfolio companies to avoid floundering … even if it is through significant consolidation (which was long overdue)
Great idea. Maybe I missed it but how much money changed hands here? $500K?
Yes, I’ve read your report about MindMaker iPhone application. Thank you for that. And now, Grocery iQ is your new report. Thank you for your early information.
thats great… wonder when australia will get something like this
nice information about grocery IQ.
you can save your precious money while shopping by using printable coupons, try at ClickMyCoupons.com.
is this your coupon site?
Hello! there.
A “dozen million”? What kind of writing is that?
Actually, I prefer Shopper, which lets me enter a list in about a third of the time as gIQ.
The massive product database sounds great until you realize that you already know what kind of hot dogs you buy, and matching brands in the program just wastes time.
coupons.com fucking sucks,
a. they browser detect not feature detect so from chrome they told me that they like safari, but not my browser, sigh.
b. they have 70 coupons for food in total, seems to me to be pretty low for a ‘real’ web coupons company
c. i figure alright fine, let’s pretend i want to buy some velveeta (sigh) so i click it, firebug throws two errors, i’m like wtf, then it apperas i’m supposed to print the coupon.
so apparently a. they don’t like my browser, b. they don’t have any relevant coupons, and c. to actually find out what any of the coupons are, i have to print them out first.. inb4 cutepdf pdf printer
Chrome does not yet support an interface for our barcode printing software, once it does we’ll be happy to support it. Readers of Techcrunch (myself included) tend to adopt early, IE & Firefox still have majority marketshare.
Steven
Shouldn’t your response to the Chrome question be something like:
“Thank you for your feedback! We really appreciate hearing from potential customers. We are also excited about the Chrome browser, and we are diligently monitoring the adoption of the browser. I use it myself. Once Chrome reaches an appropriate market share, we will definitely move to support the browser.”
I found your response dismissive.
Yeah, Steven. I really wish you’d give us glossy, worthless marketing-speak instead of actually talking about the real reason you don’t support Chrome.
Techcrunch readers tend to early-adopt (as do I) – Chrome does not yet have an interface that allows us to render the barcodes so they scan at the grocery store. IE/Firefox are fully supported (as are Mac Safari and Firefox). Once Chrome has an interface we’ll support it. As for the coupons, you don’t need to print them to see what is available, in a supported browser they appear on the screen for your choosing.
Steven
Coupons are very popular but as mentioned there is a lack of posts. Zoniing.com helps businesses, patrons, stores, events, promotions to add there coupons whenever they want and how they want so it might be of a better idea.
lets see what will happen