Business cards are used all the time for people to exchange contact information. The technology for exchanging cards using standardized pieces of paper has not changed for many years. The basic idea has remained the same, take the paper and put it in your files.
Several companies have developed things that would enable easy exchange of contacts but all of them have failed behind or has never made to the mainstream. The reasons are many but almost every company has given it their best shot.
What other companies realized that the business card concept is not going away so the best thing to do is to adapt to the idea that people will have those pieces of paper and will exchange notes with it. Once that realization occurred, other companies quickly came to the field with card scanners, card digitizers, photo’s and phone based applications.
One company that has probably put the card scanner in the right place is Zoho. They have integrated the card scanner with the CRM (Customer relationship manager) that allows the customer and business contacts to be managed in the correct context. Even if the card scanning technology is not novel, its fitting into the right milieu of CRM makes it a good fit. Combine that with the mobile platform that most people have access to when they meet people makes it a perfect fit!