The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker is working with European retailers Carrefour Group, Tesco Plc, and Metro Group that have collectively formed the EPC Product Retail Users Group of Europe.
Intel’s role in the group will be to help companies to implement hardware such as scanners and handhelds that work with the Electronic Product Code-compliant RFID technologies. EPC is a 96-bit numbering system that assigns a unique tracking number to every item that leaves a factory. The numbers are embedded into RFID chips that are placed on products, helping retailers and logistics firms to track them across supply chains.
It still remains to be seen if Intel will enter the RFID chip market. Last October, Intel’s COO, Paul Otellini stated at an analyst conference that the company had no plans to enter the RFID manufacturing market, despite investing heavily in wireless technologies such as 802.11 and silicon radios.
Otellini said RFID manufacturers would have to make the chips at commodity costs to build adoption in the market. It will take lots of units to make serious money, he said.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
