Scandit offers free access to data from over 25 million products

11.07.2012

Scandit, a leader in mobile barcode scanning and product analytics, announced the release of its all-new Product API, which is now globally available for beta access through the Scandit website.

The Product API offers developers free access to a massive database containing over 25 million product UPCs. Scandit’s database is now the largest public UPC-based product database available on the web. The Product API is part of the all-new Community Edition, which also provides Scandit’s leading Barcode Scanner SDK free of charge to developers of consumer apps. The free release heavily disrupts existing business models of well-known players such as RedLaser.

Scandit also announced an exclusive partnership with Warranty Life to provide developers with a way to monetize their apps by selling cost-effective 3rd party warranties at the scan of a barcode. Moreover, Scandit is working to close several additional partnerships with prominent brand-owners and retailers to provide additional data including images, reviews, ingredients, prices and inventory information. “Through our Product API we’re not only giving developers easy access to a wealth of product data, we’re also creating a communication channel for our partners to distribute relevant product information to millions of consumers”, says Samuel Mueller, CEO of Scandit.

In addition to the Product API, the Scandit community edition provides free access to its acclaimed Barcode Scanner SDK. The new SDK offers support for UPC, EAN and QR codes and boasts fast and accurate performance with any-angle scanning capabilities. This is the first time Scandit’s premium scan technology has been offered to developers free of charge and even notable tech guru Robert Scoble has found Scandit’s technology superior to the higher priced offerings from RedLaser.

Scandit has also partnered with cloud-based app creation platform Application Craft, thereby effectively lowering the barrier of entry for novice developers to build mobile commerce apps using a simple drag-and-drop environment. The partnership makes perfect sense in the light of recent m-commerce trends suggesting that consumers increasingly interact with products through their mobile devices. For example, Comscore reported in its recent “2012 Mobile Future in Focus Report” that by the end of 2011, 1 in 5 smartphone users regularly scanned product barcodes and nearly 1 in 8 compared prices on their phone while in a store. Developers looking to capitalize on this trend can launch their apps easily using the Scandit community edition.

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