Use iPhone to Save Money – AP News story

This blogger seriously believes in the cost benefits of owning an iPhone even with ATT and Apples stranglehold monopoly on pricing.  The following news story from the Associated Press gives you just a glimmer of the iPhone’s ability to save you money.  I’ll be posting much more about the apps and application of those apps in the “real world.”

Shoppers with smart phones find the deals   ASSOCIATED PRESS      MILWAUKEE — The rise of smart phones, with their goanywhere internet access, is changing the shopping game this holiday season.

Tech-savvy shoppers are finding it easier than ever to work the system to get the best deals.

They’re scanning barcodes with their cell phone cameras to load into price comparison Internet sites while standing in store aisles, using GPS to find discounts at nearby stores and flashing electronic coupons straight from their phones.

The ease of real-time price   comparisons creates competitive pressure for retailers that pushes prices down for everyone. Retailers who resist risk losing a sale to a rival even while the customer still is in their own store.

Briana Carter, 31, recently spied a $40 pink laptop cooling pad at a Kohl’s department store. She scanned its bar code with her iPhone and using an application called ShopSavvy found the same thing for $25 at online retailer  Amazon.com  .

While still inside Kohl’s, Carter, of Tipton, Ind., bought the pad from Amazon through her phone.

Shoppers definitely have discounts on the brain. Unique visits to the top 10 coupon and rewards sites rose 6 percent from October to November to 70.4 million, Nielsen Co. research said.

Merchants, already struggling with weak sales and a mediocre holiday season in this tough economy, are forced to play along, said David Bassuk, a managing director in the retail practice at consultancy AlixPartners.

A few years ago, www.  savings.com   listed coupons for about 1,000 retailers; that’s up to 4,000 now.

Sales to people who click   through the  savings.com   site are expected to double to $200 million this year from last.

“Would they rather have every consumer come directly to them and pay full price? Of course, but the reality is it doesn’t happen that way,” said  savings.com   CEO Loren Bendele.

About 18 percent of cell phones are smart phones; they’re on track to be the majority in the U.S. by 2011, Nielsen says.

Waiting for them are hundreds of applications made by third-party companies to root out discounts and coupons. Many of the apps are free.