Smartphones are good for many things, especially for personal information management. If you deal with business cards a lot, you probably discovered specialized apps that let you scan any business card to effortlessly create a contact entry in your iPhone. The App Store is a home to dozens of those, such as Business Card Reader for iPhone from Shape Services.

Most of them being paid, today their makers face a dangerous competitor: The hugely popular LinkedIn social network for business pros. The company today announced a re-launch of its free iPhone app titled CardMunch. As a result, their old app will no longer be supported.

The newly launched CardMunch program can digitize printed business cards and turn them into a digital representation, just like similar offerings on the App Store. Unlike other programs, CardMunch automatically links scanned cards to LinkedIn profiles:

By using the new CardMunch app, you now have access to deeper and richer information about the person behind the card — via the LinkedIn profile — who you know in common, where they’ve worked, where they went to school, and much, much more!

Go ahead, grab yourself a copy now, it’s free. More features after the break.

CardMunch – Business Card Reader by LinkedIn

* Convert business cards to address book contacts, and then add them as connections on LinkedIn. * View relevant LinkedIn profile info, connections in common, work history, and more, for the cards you scan. * Improved card capture experience for faster and easier card scanning. * Manual transcription ensures high accuracy for scanned cards. * Newly revamped user interface and visual experience

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: