Mobile coupon and Android update double-whammy from Qype

Qype is a review site that only hosts info from its users. It’s a social recommendation service in the same vein as Yelp – letting users post their own reviews and location information for either places (like restaurants) or events (like gigs). Today Qype has launches for both Android devices and a new service that integrates mobile coupons and vouchers.

Mobile coupons:

The application of mobile coupons to a review site like Qype is a powerful brew.

The mobile application version of Qype is called Qype Radar. It allows you to access all of the reviews and maps of the online version. So you can check write and post reviews, but you can also do things that only really make sense on mobile. For example, you can ping your location out to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, or do a search for local reviews that are close to your current location.

And this is where the coupons come in. If you do find a shop, restaurant or event through your Qype Radar application, you can immediately see and download any coupons associated with it. Qype claims to have over 10,000 vouchers currently available on its service – and attributes this to its relationship with local businesses. Stephen Taylor, CEO of Qype said that success in coupons isn’t just about the platform, but “more on the ability to talk to the business owners and get them on board. The direct relationship we’ve already established with local businesses allows us to offer more than 10,000 vouchers right from the start with more being added every day.”

This new function is built into the Android Qype application, which is available from today… and with this release Qype joins the growing ranks of companies who have launched on Android BEFORE they’ve launched on iPhone. The iPhone app is expected to be released “soon”.

What we think?

Couponing is a massively popular (and rapidly growing) feature of mobile devices. There are plenty of services that allow you to download or display coupons and money-off vouchers to your mobile, which can be redeemed in the shop like a regular paper coupon. So instead of carrying a pocket full of scraps of paper around, you can download all the vouchers you need to your device and use them as you need them. The question is whether Qype is entering an over-crowded market here, or if this is exactly the way you should go about couponing.
Mobile coupons are particularly awesome, but there are a lot of “coupon-only” services out there – which one is the consumer to go with? But if you have a service like Qype or Yelp that is already being used by a lot of people and it can integrate coupons in an easily usable manner, then I think that’s the kind of coupon service that consumers are more likely to use.