Moto Picks Up Symbol - Good for RFID
Motorola announced last week it is acquiring Symbol Technologies. I immediately received quite a few inquiries asking "good thing or bad thing for RFID?"
As most of us know, Symbol's RFID business grew out of the 2004 acquisition of Matrics. Matrics was an early pioneer in the passive space, and did a lot to break ground with Wal*Mart's RFID initiative. For the past few years, Symbol tags and readers have been a standard part of any RFP response for passive technology, and it's hard to argue the company isn't one of the leaders in the space.
My contacts at Motorola tell me this is a good thing. Moto had been looking to play a stronger role in the enterprise space for years, and the discussions with Symbol aren't new. Plus, the company's got a wealth of talent from a science and technology perspective to draw from, and a heck of a lot more investment dollars to put to work in the space.
From an industry perspective, let's hope we see some of the same kind of innovation from Moto we've seen in the past few years in the consumer wireless segment - RAZR RFID anyone?
