Edited Press Release.

Tokyo, Japan - Sony Corporation yesterday announced that cumulative shipments of its FeliCa contactless integrated circuit (IC) chips have reached 200 million units, as of March 2007. Sony commenced shipments of FeliCa IC cards in 1996, and has since shipped approximately 160 million chips for use in FeliCa-based cards such as "Suica" and "Edy", and over 40 million "Mobile FeliCa" IC chips used in "Osaifu-Keitai" mobile phones with electronic money functions.

Sony achieved cumulative shipments of 100 million FeliCa units within approximately 10 years of launch. Since then, FeliCa shipments reached the 200 million unit mark in just 18 months. The immediate popularity of Osaifu-Keitai mobile phones (launched in summer 2004), and rapid expansion of services such as automatic payment for public transportation systems and electronic money settlement have made major contributions to this growth.

The range of applications for FeliCa continues to increase, with various service providers offering easy, convenient and secure FeliCa-based applications. These include payment for public transportation, electronic money, credit transactions, employee ID, membership cards and point cards - all of which can be used simply by passing a card or mobile phone over a reader/writer. Going forward Sony will also seek to establish FeliCa within industries such as entertainment, dining and sports to extend FeliCa's unique brand of convenience and enjoyment among the widest possible user base.


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Labels: circuit, felica, japan, mobile, nfc, payment, rfid, technology

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Edited Press Release.

HP today announced that its researchers have developed a miniature wireless data chip that could provide broad access to digital content in the physical world.

The tiny chip could be stuck on or embedded in almost any object and make available information and content now found mostly on electronic devices or the Internet.

Some of the potential applications include storing medical records on a hospital patient’s wristband; providing audio-visual supplements to postcards and photos; helping fight counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry; adding security to identity cards and passports; and supplying additional information for printed documents.

The experimental chip, developed by the Memory Spot research team at HP Labs, is a memory device based on CMOS (a widely used, low-power integrated circuit design) and about the size of a grain of rice or smaller (2 mm to 4 mm square), with a built-in antenna. The chips could be embedded in a sheet of paper or stuck to any surface, and could eventually be available in a booklet as self-adhesive dots.

"The Memory Spot chip frees digital content from the electronic world of the PC and the Internet and arranges it all around us in our physical world," said Ed McDonnell, Memory Spot project manager, HP Labs.

The chip has a 10 megabits-per-second data transfer rate – 10 times faster than Bluetooth™ wireless technology and comparable to Wi-Fi speeds – effectively giving users instant retrieval of information in audio, video, photo or document form. With a storage capacity ranging from 256 kilobits to 4 megabits in working prototypes, it could store a very short video clip, several images or dozens of pages of text. Future versions could have larger capacities.

Information can be accessed by a read-write device that could be incorporated into a cell phone, PDA, camera, printer or other implement. To access information, the read-write device is positioned closely over the chip, which is then powered so that the stored data is transferred instantly to the display of the phone, camera or PDA or printed out by the printer. Users could also add information to the chip using the various devices.

“We are actively exploring a range of exciting new applications for Memory Spot chips and believe the technology could have a significant impact on our consumer businesses, from printing to imaging, as well as providing solutions in a number of vertical markets,” said Howard Taub, HP vice president and associate director, HP Labs.

The chip incorporates a built-in antenna and is completely self-contained, with no need for a battery or external electronics. It receives power through inductive coupling from a special read-write device, which can then extract content from the memory on the chip. Inductive coupling is the transfer of energy from one circuit component to another through a shared electromagnetic field. A change in current flow through one device induces current flow in the other device.

Memory Spot chips have numerous possible consumer and business-based applications.

Some examples are:

* Medical records: Embed a Memory Spot chip into a hospital patient’s wrist band and full medical and drug records can be kept securely available.
* Audio photo: Attach a chip to the prints of photographs and add music, commentary or ambient sound to enhance the enjoyment of viewing photos.
* Digital postcards: Send a traditional holiday postcard to family and friends with a chip containing digital pictures of a vacation, plus sounds and even video clips.
* Document notes: A Memory Spot chip attached to a paper document can include a history of all the corrections and additions made to the text, as well as voice notes and graphical images.
* Perfect photocopies: A Memory Spot chip attached to a cover sheet eliminates the need to copy the original document. Just read the perfect digital version into the photocopier and the result will be sharp output every time, no matter how many copies are needed, and avoiding any possibility of the originals jamming in the feeder.
* Security passes: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds --- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included.
* Anti-counterfeit tags: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.


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Labels: antenna, business, circuit, rfid, security, technology

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Smart Labels, identification labels with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags embedded, have become an emerging commodity that grows in demand along with the existing barcode labels. Different applications of smart labels in several vertical industries, such as retail and manufacturing, have started to complement the limitations of barcode labels that require a line of sight in an automatic identification process.

Ranging from textile and apparel labelling for garment tracking to case-level tracking throughout supply chain, smart labels being used in different applications can also vary. In the current market, there are passive, semi passive and active labels; passive labels rely on power from radio wave transmission of an RFID reader, semi-passive labels use battery only for running micro (or nano) electronic circuitry while still relying on the power from radio wave transmission of an RFID reader for communication and active labels operate entirely on battery.

A new type of smart label that potentially emerges in the near future is intelligent label that could include some additional data beside identification data and integrate micro and nanosensors, sensors in the scale of micrometer and nanometer, in its packaging. The current state of nanotechnology, nanopackaging and existing integrated circuit (IC) technologies has made the commercial availability of these labels closer to reality than science fiction.

Imagine cooking microwavable foods with a single no-brainy start button. Forget about the trouble of setting timer and some other microwave settings. Simply put a microwavable food tagged with an intelligent label that contains several sensors for detecting temperature, humidity and moisture level into a microwave oven equipped with an RFID reader. With a single press of start button, the oven could then read the cooking instructions embedded in the intelligent label and start cooking. During the cooking process, the oven could dynamically adjust the room temperature, humidity and moisture level based on the reading from the sensors for the best cooking result.

Even though, a demonstration of this kind of intelligent label and microwave oven during the exhibition of the Labelexpo Asia 2005 is unlikely, it is worth-noted that the third day of the seminar in the event will present several basic issues in smart labels and RFID.

Labels: circuit, label, reader, rfid, scm, tag, technology, tracking

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