Mar 23, 2005This article was originally published by RFID Update.
March 23, 2005—Sun announced this week the opening of an RFID test center in Korea. Situated in the major shipping port city of Busan, the center will be managed in collaboration with the local Busan National University. It will be even larger than the 17,000 square-foot mammoth RFID test center Sun opened last year in Dallas, Texas. Like in Dallas, the Busan center will offer domestic companies the ability to test RFID deployments in a real-world environment. But additionally, the center will offer a certification program and a research and development component. Also, owing to Busan's role as an important port, there will be an outdoor area where shipping containers can be tagged and tested.
Sun's choice of Korea for the RFID test center represents its identification of the country and the broader Asian region as an area of great promise for RFID. The Korean government, like its counterparts in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, sees RFID as "a game-changing technology," according Sun's Director of RFID Product Management Sam Liu. The technology's relative youth and almost guaranteed longevity make it a ripe opportunity in which to innovate early and establish leading intellectual property. Also, because so many consumer products sold in the Americas and Europe are manufactured in Asia, Asian companies are rapidly being affected by retailer mandates, as their vendors look for them to tag shipments coming from the factory.
The Busan center represents another step in Sun's strategy of capturing RFID marketshare by way of test centers. As companies begin to implement RFID, Sun hopes to make the process as simple and painless as possible by offering a multi-step plan. "We educate, test, implement, and deploy for the customer," says Liu. The RFID test center concept -- with each tailored to its local market, staffed with RFID experts, and housing state-of-the-art testing facilities -- provides the perfect vehicle.
More about Sun's RFID products on Sun.com
