Two interesting acquisitions over the last week deserve mention.

The first was eBay’s acquisition of the barcode scanning iphone app RedLaser. RedLaser enables users to scan the barcodes of products via their cell phone camera and then compare prices online. The application has been downloaded over 2 million times at $1.99 per download.

As part of the acquisition, RedLaser will become part of ebay’s mobile app with all of ebay’s listings showing when a barcode is scanned. The various merchants from shopping.com will also be integrated. Plus the app will now be free.

To put the success of ebay’s mobile initiatives in perspective – over the last year, ebay’s mobile apps have generated revenues of over $500 mil. This is, of course, across platforms - certainly a far more synergistic acquisition as compared to skype.

In summary, RedLaser enables the ebay app to help consumers find the best product at the cheapest price and paypal can help them complete the transaction if required.

The second was the acquisition of Melodeo by HP. Melodeo is a cloud based music streaming service which will enable users of the HP/Palm handset to scan itunes libraries, create their playlists etc. Price: £30 million. Here we go with another vendor aiming for the mobile handset and services market.