Venture to develop global standards for radio ID tags
A Sino-Japanese venture headed by an adviser to the central government plans to kick-start the development of open global standards for radio frequency identification (RFID) systems used in the electronic tracking of goods.
Beijing-based e-commerce firm Sparkice and Japan's T-Engine Forum yesterday announced an alliance to conduct RFID pilot programmes in the mainland using the Ubiquitous ID (uID) technology developed in Japan. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Sparkice chief executive Edward Zeng, also the international co-ordinator for China's National RFID Tag Standards Working Group, said the test results would be submitted to the working group for consideration as the mainland's official electronic tracking platform.
'China needs technology standards that are open, interoperable and widely functional,' Mr Zeng said. 'This Sino-Japanese co-operation is a significant step for both countries, as well as for the interoperability of global RFID standards.'
RFID allows manufacturers and retailers to track their goods by labelling them, or their containers, with small, wireless electronic tags.
Efforts to adopt RFID in China have stepped up, due in large part to Wal-Mart's demand that all its major suppliers adopt the technology by January.
An estimated 70 per cent of the United States retailing giant's goods are made in China.
But a worldwide implementation of RFID has faced significant hurdles because of a lack of global standards, multiple frequencies and specifications for tags, optical reader compatibility problems, chip costs, and data-sharing, privacy and security issues.
Mr Zeng said the newly formed SparkiceLab, an exclusive mainland test site for uID, represented a step in the right direction for China to embrace internationally accepted standards and move quickly to meet the Wal-Mart deadline.
The non-profit T-Engine Forum, led by University of Tokyo professor Ken Sakamura, is a consortium of about 250 firms, including Hitachi, NEC Corp, Mitsubishi, Samsung Electronics, IBM, Microsoft Corp and Sun Microsystems. Like Linux, the uID source code can be freely accessed for users to develop various applications.
Discussions were also ongoing with proponents of the Electronic Product Code RFID standard, which was supported by large US firms such as Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Mr Zeng said.
