KDDI just announced that scanR will be part of its new mobile service, Business EZ. This new service for all au subscribers is a portal for productivity services, including calendars, information and now, scanR. It is the place to go for the latest tools to help people stay productive. scanR is also part of the consumer content program and is available on the au EZweb portal. For scanR, this marks the first major partnership announcement outside of the United States.
As a US-based company, why did we partner with KDDI in Japan now?
Japan leads the world in camera phone adoption
There are 100 million mobile subscribers in Japan and nearly all of them have camera phones. These aren’t just toy cameras, the majority are 2 megapixels or higher and many include anti-shake compensation and high quality lenses. As the first market in the world to achieve mass market penetration of digital camera-quality phones, Japan is an ideal place for scanR.
KDDI is a world leader in mobile services
The mobile phone brand for KDDI is “au”. It is the fastest growing mobile service in Japan, adding 3 million subscribers in the last year. This achievement is notable as the market is fully penetrated, so they are taking customers from the other mobile carriers. To do this, KDDI differentiated from NTT DoCoMo with advanced phone capabilities and innovative mobile services. As a result, over 10 million KDDI subscribers have 2 megapixel or better camera phones.
KDDI is remarkable in its ability to introduce new services. For example, recently KDDI introduced a mobile storage service for photos and email called My Page and gained 1 million paying subscribers in the first 3 months. While GPS services are just getting started in other regions, KDDI launched navigation service called EZ Navi and gained 5 million subscribers paying 210 JPY a month.
KDDI and scanR
Today, KDDI and scanR announced the availability of スキャンR, the Japanese version of scanR for au phones. Check the press release here (Japanese). スキャンR is a simple way to save and share paper information, including documents, whiteboards and business cards. Any Japanese subscriber can use the service for free up to five times per month, but only au subscribers can use the business card scanner that turns pictures of Japanese business cards into digital contacts.
To try it in Japanese or English, go to http://m.scanr.com on any mobile phone.
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