Symbol Technologies has announced its intent to acquire Matrics, a privately held supplier of RFID solutions, for $230 million in cash. On the heels of Wal-Mart, U.S. Department of Defense and other RFID-compliance efforts, the RFID market is moving forward.
Venture Development Corporation (VDC), an independent technology market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in a number of embedded, industrial, defense and niche enterprise IT markets, estimates the RFID systems market at approximately $1.5 billion in 2004 and is expected to reach $4.7 billion by 2007, growing by 45 percent annually. Much of the growth and opportunity in this market is predicated on the adoption of RFID as a supply chain tracking technology -- tracking pallets, cartons and cases.
Matrics produces EPC-compliant RFID readers and transponders, and authored the initial EPC Class 0 specification.
Symbol has a significant installed base within the retail supply chain and transportation/logistics environments -- all considered target RFID user markets.
For more information, visit www.vdc-corp.com.