ScanR goes to Japan targeting cameraphone users

In an unusual move, the US-based company is going to bring its mobile technology to Japan. A start-up called ScanR provides business users with a capability to capture an image of a document, business card or message on a whiteboard with their cameraphone or digital camera and send it to their email via the ScanR’s servers that do the job of converting the image data into pdf or vCard formats. ScanR relies on a proprietary image processing and data refinement technology that is designed to work with any mobile phone platform. During the image to text recognition process, ScanR identifies keywords from the file and assigns them as tags that make the file searchable through ScanR, Google desktop or Vista desktop search. It’s also possible to send the captured images to fax machine or email as well. ScanR plans to go with a commercial rollout of its membership-based service in 2Q07, allowing up to 5 uses per month at no fee and charging around JPY300-700 for unlimited usage.

The choice of Japan for their first commercial rollout can be explained by the fact that the Japanese cameraphone market is predominantly penetrated with megapixel cameras, while the U.S. is still in the transition from VGA to megapixel camera capacity.

Source: K-tai Watch