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by Alan Alper, MA Editorial Staff Posted on Monday, January 15, 2007 4:46:00 PM Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox    | Abstract: | Passive RFID and bar coding leader agrees to acquire WhereNet Corp. for $126 million in cash to gain access to active RFID technology used to track high-value assets in industrial manufacturing and distribution applications. |
| Keywords: | Zebra Technologies, WhereNet, passive RFID, active RFID, bar coding, real- time locating system, RTLS |
Moving to diversify its place in the Auto-ID market, Zebra Technologies Corp. late last week said it has agreed to acquire WhereNet Corp., a purveyor of active radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, for $126 million in cash. The deal would provide Zebra -- a major player in the bar coding and emerging passive RFID printing/encoding spaces -- with real-time locating system (RTLS) technology used to find and track high-value assets across the supply chain and within factories and distribution centers. RTLS, which combines wireless RFID tags, fixed-position antennas, and Web-enabled software, has found a home in the automotive market, where many leading companies, such as Ford and Nissan, use the technology in parts replenishment, vehicle inventory tracking, truck yard management, and work-in-process applications. WhereNet is said to be a market leader in RTLS, with roughly 150 installations worldwide, including a major deployment at the Port of Long Beach, CA. Active RFID complements Zebra's existing Auto-ID businesses, and could help accelerate the company's growth as the market for bar code technology plateaus and passive RFID struggles to establish a foothold beyond retail and defense compliance initiatives. And Zebra could use a boost: The company posted revenues of $549.6 million for the nine-month period ended September 30, up only 5.1% from the like period of 2005. [Click to continue] |
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