The day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday as its commonly known, is one big feeding frenzy for bargain hunters. Like hungry piranhas, they descend on malls around the U.S. on the hunt for the best savings of the year. Unfortunately, there are a lot of piranhas, so competition for the best deals is fierce. And many Black Friday shopping adventures end with more tears and empty shelves, than hundred dollar flat-screen TVs.

But, as one might expect, there’s an app for that. Actually, there’s a couple.

Mall Maps – You Are Here costs a mere $2.99 in the iPhone App Store, and provides shoppers with detailed floor-plans to over 1,000 American malls. It’s the perfect thing to plan the attack route and, perhaps more importantly, an effective exit strategy. Currently it’s the 9th most popular reference app in the store.

TGI Black Friday is a free app put out by the online coupon repository, Dealcatcher.com. As the source would indicate, it offers more than 8,000 discounts at major retailers.

ShopSavvy is another free app, available for both iPhone and Android users. And it scores well both for technical innovation, and retailer angering. Using your camera’s phone, you can go into a store and scan the UPC code of a product. The app will then tell you exactly how much that same item costs at all the competitor’s stores. Great for bargain-hunters, annoying for the folks selling the products.

So if you are the U.S. and you plan to brave the crowds on Black Friday, don’t leave home without spare water, pepper spray for crowd control, and your app-equipped iPhone.

Related posts:

1. American retailers finally hit the social media nail on the head with a Black Friday to remember
2. iPhone Apps Store Celebrates First Birthday
3. Your iPhone knows if you’re “Fit or Fugly”

Tags: app store, Apple, Black Friday, iPhone

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 10:05 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.