ABBYY, which provides document recognition, data capture and linguistic software, has launched its Mobile OCR Engine 3.0 software development kit (SDK), which gives developers powerful tools to create mobile or other compact applications enhanced with optical character recognition (OCR) and business card recognition (BCR) functions.
ABBYYs small-footprint OCR technology automatically transforms images of text and documents captured with a digital camera into editable and searchable text, eliminating the need to input information manually. Using the BCR functionality, developers can create mobile applications to transfer data from images of business cards directly to the phones address book. OCR and BCR capabilities can be embedded into any camera-based device, including mobile phones, communicators, PDAs, digital cameras and portable scanners.  
In addition to the support for many popular mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, LINUX and others, ABBYY Mobile OCR Engine 3.0 now enables developers to readily add OCR and BCR functions to Android-based applications.
We have been observing an increasing interest in Android among device manufacturers, and we anticipate growing demand for sophisticated mobile OCR applications for this innovative platform, says Katya Solntseva, Director of Mobile Products at ABBYY. Our Mobile OCR Engine is a powerful development kit that allows developers to create a wide range of smart, easy-to-integrate mobile applications, from simple end user programs to complex business solutions. 
ABBYY Mobile OCR Engine enables developers to extend the capabilities of various mobile devices and applications in many ways. For example, using a cameraphone with an OCR application, clippings from magazines, books, receipts, ads and other documents can be captured and automatically converted into text, which can then be edited, stored or sent via email or SMS.
The captured and recognised text can be further used in other mobile and PC applications including notepads, calendars, libraries and other applications. Developers can also easily leverage the BCR functions of the new SDK and expand them to a broader use. For instance, they can create solutions that not only capture and export business card information, but also synchronise the data with other contact information management applications on the PC or server.
The SDK provides powerful recognition technology, including a new Document Analysis algorithm to ensure more accurate and faster OCR processing, combined with enhanced capability to reproduce the structure of the original text, such as columns and paragraphs. It also delivers improved image pre-processing capabilities, including skew correction and image binarisation, as well as the ability to detect noise on the original image.
To ensure extensive international reach of mobile OCR applications, the SDK recognises 58 languages, covering Latin, Cyrillic and Greek characters. In addition, it provides dictionaries created specifically for BCR in 16 languages, including Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish.