RFID in Japan

It was December 2003 when YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory (UNL) unveiled one of the first mobile phones with integrated RFID and barcode readers. It is called UC-Phone and is PHS-based.

UC-Phone is now available from Personal Media Corp. (this is the page about UC-Phone) At the moment, UC-Phone handsets are primarily targeted for the use by supply-chain and logistic businesses who plan to test asset tracking and food traceability systems. A UC-Phone Evaluation Kit consists of a UC-Phone device, 10 RFID tags, and software; and costs about $3500 (367,500 Japanese Yen).

The device can read Hitachi mu-chips and, optionally, other kinds of RFID tags (e.g., Toppan's T-Junction and Fujitsu's FerVID). It has 320x230 pixels 2.4 inch color display and can display 64,000 colors; equipped with external connectors, an earphone jack and a speaker. It functions as a phone, an RFID reader, and a barcode reader.

via Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun, January 31, in Japanese

Posted by konomi at February 2, 2005 01:30 AM | TrackBack