RedLaser is a mobile application that is available on the Apple App Store and Android Market. RedLaser was developed by a company called Occipital, which was acquired by eBay in June 2010. Between the Apple App Store and the Android Market, RedLaser is close to hitting 9 million downloads. This is up from 2 million downloads since the time of the acquisition. The RedLaser application allows you to scan a barcode on a retail item and find competitive prices on the Internet.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) acquired a company called Occipital this past June. Occipital created an iPhone application called RedLaser, which had the ability to read bar-codes and find deals specific to that product across multiple retail channels. eBay is applying this technology to their Half.com web property.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) has acquired the barcode-scanning iPhone application RedLaser and other related technologies from Occipital.  RedLaser has been downloaded over two million times from the App Store.

Occipital, LLC is a technology startup company that was founded by University of Michigan alumni Jeffrey Powers and Vikas Reddy. Occipital has seed funding from TechStars and is currently based in Boulder, Colorado. Occipital developed a successful iPhone application called RedLaser, which caught the attention of Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT).

Occipital has made over $1 million in revenue from their iPhone application RedLaser. The RedLaser application has been in the top 5 of the Apple App Store for over 3 months now. Occipital did not have a marketing budget whatsoever. The RedLaser application grew with the help of word-of-mouth. Occipital co-founder Jeff Powers said that RedLaser was released this past May, but it did not have any traction.

Occipital released an update shortly after that made the application work properly. After that RedLaser really started growing. RedLaser [iTunes link] barely received any press after the update was made. Occipital has only 2 employees and sells about 6,000 of their application per day with a $1.99 price. The Wall Street Journal and Martha Stewart recently gave the application some publicity. Occipital claims that Martha Stewart’s publicity helped increase sales by about 1,000.

What does RedLaser do? The application scans barcodes using the iPhone camera and searches for the item across many e-retailers. Price comparisons are provided shortly after scanning the item. It is like the Shazam of shopping.