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Amazon Flow

By February 17, 2014App Development

To make money from its apps, Amazon has discovered a new way out which has nothing that involves clicking on various ads. There already exist an official app for iOS of the company and also, the company has now launched a new feature known as “flow”. The function of flow is to allow the users to scan items with the help of the camera of their iphone and thus can buy that particular item on Amazon.com with the help of the app.

According to Amazon the new feature flow only works with iOS7 and will work best when the user is looking for products like books, video games, packed groceries and DVD’s. The only main work the user is required to do is to move the camera of the iPhone towards an item and then the app of Amazon will look up for it and finally will provide the user with the option of purchasing it on Amazon.com. Additionally, users will also have the option of scanning of multiple items at same time. These is possible by saving an item, once it is found, in the histories of the app and then allow the user to add more items in the shopping cart.

It is not the first time flow is seen. A standalone app was also released by Amazon in the year 2011 and the company now has actually made it a vital part of the official app of Amazon. The standalone app of flow is still available for Android and iOS. The ability of scanning barcodes for the users of the smartphones is always very interesting but as the barcodes are not found that easy it is not very convenient to use due to which the amount of complexity users face is more. Also, many users do not even have a bit of idea as to where to look for the bar code on an item and some do not even know about it. It is a surprise yet true which is common in our world. So we can say the effort of Amazon is a genius stroke and it could make a pressure on competitors like eBay to create a similar feature for its standalone app.

As time passes Flow should also be able to recognize various items like headphones or other types of gadgets. The app is now also available on iTunes with a free download for devices with iOS7.