Cellfire is a new mobile coupon service that will launch nationally tomorrow. The Santa Clara-based company offers a downloadable application for your cellphone that provides discount coupons for T.G.I. Friday's, Hollywood Video and other major brands. When you want to buy something in a store, you launch Cellfire on your phone, select the coupon you want to use and show it to the cashier. They'll type in the code and approve the discount. Cellfire downloads new coupons on a regular basis, and you only pay the data charges (around 1¢ per coupon). Cellfire have been testing the beta version of the software with Cingular customers in the California area, but tomorrow they'll roll it out across the US (still limited to Cingular for the moment, alas).
This is a really neat idea that points the way for mobile commerce - while consumers hate to receive ads on their phones, coupons offer a stronger incentive. Think of it as permission-based marketing. MobileCrunch criticizes the lack of support for other carriers and phones, but I'm told those are on the way. If Cellfire can add support for multiple carriers and handsets, and vastly increase the number of coupons on offer, they could gain some real traction.
