The European market for optical recognition and scanning products is expected to be worth some $1,800m by 1996 compared with less than $500m now, with Germany the largest market valued at $460m. According to a report from market analysts Frost & Sullivan International in London, France will be second largest, worth around $300m and Italy third with $257.6m estimated revenues. The UK will be worth around $240m and the Benelux countries will pull in $137.9m. The report, which covers flatbed, roller bed and handheld scanning devices, sees fastest growth rates for greyscale and colour scanners used in conjunction with MS-DOS-based personal computers and workstations, adding that most growth in the optical character recognition sector will be for unbundled optical recognition software. Accor ding to the report, the largest users of scanning and optical character recognition equipment in Europe are national and loc al governments, followed by the financial services and insur ance sectors, with word proces sing and desktop publishing being the dominant applicati ons. The full report costs $3,700 from Frost & Sullivan.
