Smartphone Scanner Will Allow for In-Store Price Comparison

Internet marketers in Russia will now be able to compete with traditional retailers in their territories through a new service called "Yandex".  Yandex will allow a smartphone user to scan the bar code of a product in the store, and to compare the in-store price with the product's price on the Internet.  Similar services in the U.S. and Europe, including PriceGrabber, RedLaser, ShopSavvy, and Pic2shop, have been operating for several years.  According to Sergei Savin, analyst for Johnson & Partners, smartphones account for just 10% of the total phones used in Russia, with the percentage of people using all of the smartphones' capabilities even lower.  At least initially, the Yandex service is thus not expected to have a major impact on bottom-line Internet sales in Russia.

http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/250070/v_magazine_so_smartfonom