Compaq's introduction of an optical scanner within a keyboard for PCs in its Presario range was not only an innovation that the industry required but an innovation that PC buyers would expect of Compaq.
The Compaq Scanner Keyboard is available as an extra add-on for any other industry-standard PCs.
The phrase 'industry-standard' is used here because Compaq was loath to use the words 'IBM-compatible' in its product literature for two reasons.
The first is that IBM is a bitter rival and Compaq would prefer to have everybody say 'Compaq-compatible'.
The second is that even though IBM invented the PC and all the clones and copycats, including Compaq, jumped on the bandwagon to follow this platform, being compatible with IBM does not really mean that much nowadays.
Big Blue after all helped design the PowerPC chip that powers the Macintosh computer and operating system from Apple and uses the PowerPC in some of its own Risc (reduced instruction set computing) systems designed to run operating systems such as Windows NT or different flavours of UNIX.