NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

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Heavy Lifting.

MAPORAMA INTERNATIONAL ANNOUNCES A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH SCANBUY® TO OFFER NEW EXCLUSIVE MOBILE SERVICES

Paris, December 15th 2005 – Maporama International, the leading supplier of geocentric services, today announces a strategic partnership with the American company Scanbuy®. This association announces great revenues perspectives for Maporama International, thanks to the implementation of an innovative technology associating bar code scanning from a camera phone and the geocentric services from Maporama International.

Maporama International and Scanbuy® partner to offer in world premiere a new geocentric content service on mobile phone.
Scanbuy® is the leader of a bar code scanning technology from camera phones (mobile phones equipped with a camera). This innovative technology consists in simplifying the access to multiple informative contents (product information, prices, customer ratings, points of sales listing, etc..) thanks to the optical capture, from a simple camera phone, of a bar code placed on any product or advertising material (billboard, paper, PC or TV screen, etc..).


Maporama International and Scanbuy® partner to complement the content access service with advanced geocentric services. This association represents a unique innovation on the market. From now on, Maporama International provides, thanks to its geocentric services, cartographic content anywhere and at any time, thanks a simple scanning of a product bar code or advertising material. Giving access to people and professional to a cartographic content in mobility situation, the users will instantaneously know where the point of sale is, and how to get to it.

A unique services offering dedicated to customers and mobile professionals
The capture of a bar code located for instance on an advertising poster, generates in only one click an automatic connection to the Maporama servers. Then the servers send on the mobile phone the point of sales list (ranked by proximity order and that offer the special deal or promotion highlighted by the poster), along with the precise itinerary to get to the chosen point of sale.


This unique offering from Maporama International opens multiple application domains in the sectors of distribution, tourism and travel, services and communication.


Indeed, the implementation of this service remarkably facilitates the customer displacement on the point of sale, giving them from their mobile phone in a single click, at anytime and anywhere, the geocentric information needed to get successfully to the point of sale. This mobile service strongly contributes to the return on investment rate of the promotional marketing campaigns, and effectively improves the marketing activities closed to the customer’s needs.


Also available from all mobile professionals, the service offering deployed by Maporama International, in association with Scanbuy®, is a productivity booster for the company and facilitates the link between the field and the headquarter. An example: a maintenance technician finishing an intervention on a customer product, points his mobile phone on the bar code of the repaired product. The bar code scanning automatically generates an intervention report, including the customer’s localization and immediately activates the information transmission to the information system of the company.


The business perspectives of such an offer are tremendous, in view of the 30 millions of daily users of the solution in Japan: the number of scanning has exceeded the SMS sending, that proves the excellent acceptation rate of the application from all the users.


« The association of Maporama International and Scanbuy® guarantees our customers a very rapid return on investment: instantaneously giving them all the information necessary to their displacement on the point of sale, we participate to the decrease of the product buying cycle. From this point of view, Maporama International is a key partner; it is the one provider of cartographic content able to guarantee a perfect technological leadership on this application as well as the high quality of geocentric information. It will significantly enrich the Scanbuy’s solutions” comments Olivier Attia, CEO of Scanbuy. “More than a partner, Maporama International is a strategic player of Scanbuy business development, because they will on the core of its development. “ adds Olivier Attia.


Commenting on this partnership, Sydney Drahy, President of Maporama International, explains: « Maporama International works to increase its business development and innovate in terms of mobility services. This process results on the association between the bar code scanning technology and the geocentric services, which revolutionize our customers market (distribution brands, hotels chains, banks, logistics and maintenance companies…) and the users way of living, who are constantly looking for mobile solutions in their daily buying processes. The feedback we get from the market is unanimous: the revenues perspectives are excellent”.


source : The Wall Street Journal, 10/2005



About Maporama International
Maporama International is the European-leading supplier of geocentric services. Geocentric services enable companies to locate precisely fixed elements as well as dynamic elements in real time using the most comprehensive cartographic coverage available on the market. All Maporama clients have access to Maporama Geocentric Services Framework (MGSF), a platform operated 24/7 designed to fully exploit all the benefits brought by geocentric services. Companies use MGSF in most of their everyday processes, such as: - Marketing: optimising the location of sales/distribution outlets, cleaning corporate databases, leading targeted marketing operations according to the location of the prospects, guiding clients to the nearest sales outlet etc.- Sales: Identifying prospects/clients in a determined geographical zone, allocating them to a specific salesman, creating optimised route to visit them on the field etc.- Delivery: Checking the validity of delivery addresses, creating optimised route for your delivery teams, visualising their positions in real time, get informed when a task is executed etc.- Customer care: indicating to clients where are the nearest repair agents, identifying the nearest technician to intervene on site …- Administration: checking employees’ travelling expenses etc.Maporama International has more than 500 customers in over 20 countries including Accor, Aventis, Delphi Automotive, Dr Martens, Europcar, Hitachi, Ikea, L’Oréal and Renault. Headquartered in Paris (France), the company has a direct presence in Italy, Spain, UK and in the USA.


About SCANBUY®
SCANBUY® , Inc currently develops technology that provides mobile phones and other wireless devices with the ability to quickly and cost efficiently capture, decode and process barcodes found on products, catalogs, magazines, etc..SCANBUY® solutions provide an interface between the physical and digital world using camera phones or other handheld devices. SCANBUY® has created and trademarked the concept of ScanCommerce for mobile and Internet transactions initiated by capturing a barcode.SCANBUY® 's flagship product, ScanZoom enables camera phones and other handheld devices equipped with a digital camera to capture and decode barcodes. SCANBUY maintains a full portfolio of business-to-business solutions in various areas: business supplies distribution, Home HealthCare, exhibition management, etc.SCANBUY® delivers customized solutions to meet the needs of all end-users, integrates its products with an array of business platforms and provides SDK's to be utilized with other proprietary solutions.


For more information

Nathalie Weinryb – Virginie Giraud
Parme Communication
00 33 (0)1 46 10 65 44
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

Cécile Daragnès –Marketing Communication Manager
00 33 (0)1 44 84 10 00
[e-mail]
http://www.maporama.com

Philippe Askienazy- France Business Partner Relationships
SCANBUY®
00 33 (0)1 40 71 64 64
[e-mail]