I recently purchased a HTC Incredible, the latest Android phone from Verizon. I was pretty content with my black berry, but knew I had to get the latest touch smart phone to stay ahead of the curve. With the continued growth of smart phones (ever since the iPhone) I knew this is a market that can’t be ignored. Overall I’m fairly satisfied with the phone. This isn’t another phone review as much as a few notes on some opportunities I noticed for marketers.

One of the coolest things I didn’t know about these new smart phones is their ability to scan bar codes. With a simple app you can scan any bar code using your camera and do a quick search for that product. There are a lot of apps that use this to pull coupons and such, however, there’s even bigger opportunity lurking.

How many of you know about the QR Code? This also can be scanned and often used as a hyperlink between the real world and your phone. It is a pain in the ass to use the browser on your phone. Imagine seeing a billboard and using your phone’s camera to quickly pull up the website? That’s exactly what you can do with QR Codes, just point your phone and visit the website embedded in the code instantly. I’m hoping QR codes will continue to gain popularity and people innovate how they are used.

I’m limited to the Android marketplace but I was still surprised to see how few apps there were for sites I frequent daily. Granted I check out some niche stuff online, but creating a simple RSS app or the like isn’t that complicated and the benefits outweigh the costs. An idea outside the scopeof marketing is to create an online tool that easily builds and submits basic apps to the store. This will let business stay closer to their customers and will allow the site to charge a small fee for the service.

These are just my thoughts for now, I’ll expand them in the future.