Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

After stepping back from its planned IPO last Friday to "when market conditions improve," an Alien Technology executive stepped through the quiet period curtain long enough to defend the company's manufacturing yield and how the company's IPO was delayed.

Linda Prosser, Alien's corporate marketing VP, said the company had always been slated to go IPO last Friday and that the decision to move it to day-by-day status—where the company is not saying that it will go public on any particular day, but is awaiting better market conditions—was not related to anything about Alien's financial health or product status and that the only influences were "geopolitical events."Read more...

Look for Metro AG in September to start making noise about its item-level RFID efforts, working with Intermec. Germany’s Metro is not only of Europe’s largest retailers, it is among the most technologically-sophisticated retailers in the world.

Although Metro has always been a retailer that needs to be watched, that is even more of the case now because Metro has done something that almost no other retailer has ever done: beaten back Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart moved into the German market some nine years ago when it bought the Wertkauf and Interspar chains. On Friday, Wal-Mart blinked and agreed to sell all of its 85 German stores to Metro…

Alien Technology, which grabbed the coveted RFID trading symbol, had been scheduled to launch its IPO on Thursday, which then moved to Friday. It has now “decided to postpone its IPO due to market conditions,” Alien spokesperson Sue Barnes said in an E-mail to reporters.

Barnes stressed that this is not necessarily a permanent move and other Wall Street observers said the company seems to evaluating on a day-by-day basis. “It has not withdrawn or cancelled the offering, and will complete the offering when market conditions improve,” Barnes said.

The IPO has been watched closely as it will give Wall Street an opportunity to comment on its RFID sentiments through this signature trading symbol, which will let Alien enjoy the fruits–and suffer the punishments–of an RFID movement with an uncertain future. The StorefrontBacktalk Week-in-Review analyst panel discussed Alien’s move Thursday afternoon, shortly before the company decided to postpone again.

Pete Abell, a veteran RFID analyst who now works for IDC, is skeptical when—and whether—Alien’s IPO will happen. Even though Alien’s statement says it will happen when market conditions improve, Abell said, “They always say that, but with no next date, they better have some great new news, which is highly unlikely.”

“The key problem is that they continue to hemorrhage money. Their highly self-touted FSA manufacturing process gets yields in the 15 percent range and they currently sell readers to Wal-Mart at $200 below manufacturing cost,” said Abell, the program director for RFID at IDC’s Manufacturing Insights. Texas Instruments “has a great new UHF chip just certified by EPCglobal, which will compete with Impinj and Alien’s is an also ran.”

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Another group of retail technology analysts sat down Thursday late afternoon to look at the retail technology week that was. This week’s panel independent retail technology consultant John Fontanella—veteran analyst with the Aberdeen Group and AMR Research—along with returning guests IHL President Greg Buzek and the Retail Systems Alert Group’s Paula Rosenblum. StorefrontBacktalk‘s Editor Evan Schuman moderated. This week’s topics were Alien’s delayed IPO and the problematic ROI picture of kiosks. If some disappointing earnings and a few economic darkclouds are any indication, the retail tech sector may be in for a serious downturn. If so, what segments will fare well and which will likely get bloodied?

A few vendors have been pushing digital watermark technology—somewhat equivalent to a 21st Century microdot—as a clever way to bridge the physical store and online worlds, without the need for keyboard interactions. The cellphone becomes the remote control. Is this where much of retailing is headed? Will it work? What are the practical implications for customer service?

Are there topics or panelists you’d like us to consider for next week? Please don’t be shy.…

When Wal-Mart corporate wants to change a policy or procedure, it's fond of trying it in a small way in an out-of-the-way place to see if it works. Read more...

At the end of every week, StorefrontBacktalk.com will assemble some of the industry’s top consultants, analysts and IT executives to discuss that week’s retail tech developments. We inaugurated our StorefrontBacktalk Week In Review on July 21.

The July 21 panel included Pete Abell from IDC, Paula Rosenblum from the Retail Systems Alert Group, Greg Buzek of IHL and Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who today serves as VP for Solutionary.

The panel–moderated by StorefrontBacktalk Editor Evan Schuman–ripped into a wide range of topics. Listen to Rasch, Rosenblum, Buzek and Abell discuss the new PCI changes announced by Visa or Rosenblum, Rasch and Buzek debate how multi-channel will likely do this holiday shopping season. Abell tackled HP’s RFID-rival Memory Spot alone while Rasch, Buzek and Rosenblum ganged up on self-checkout trends, including a fascinating discussion about self-checkout obliterating impulse purchases. Rosenblum and Buzek also argued about workforce management technology, concluding that the larger companies are–much more than they initially thought–avoiding workforce technology.

Please listen and shout your feedback to us.…

A new report from industry analyst firm The Aberdeen Group does not bring a lot of optimistic news for RFID proponents, with predicted trouble for finding sufficiently-experienced RFID personnel, migrating to new data-collection methods such as mobile and biometrics as well as predicted major hiccups with efforts to scale RFID to the next level.

One bright note: the survey finds that users no longer see cost as the single most important factor. That’s significant because it’s the first time in the years that Aberdeen has conducted this study where interviewees did not choose cost as the most important issue when making RFID decisions.

Report author John Fontanella, Aberdeen’s Senior VP and service director for supply chain and retail research, said one of the most troubling findings in the survey of RFID users was that most companies were doing the absolute minimum to comply with mandates. In other words, they weren’t leveraging what they are required to do for a major customer and using it to improve their own operations. To read the full story, please click here.…

Symbol Technologies and Intermec today officially ended their 16-month-old lawsuit that had Symbol accusing Intermec of infringing various Symbol bar code scanning and wireless patents. Without announcing the terms, the companies issued a joint statement that they “have reached an agreement that settles all outstanding intellectual property (IP) disputes between the two companies.”

“Under the settlement agreement, Intermec and Symbol have cross-licensed certain patents, have entered into four-year covenants not to sue with respect to remaining patents, and have released patent infringement damage claims that may have existed on the settlement date or may arise before the covenants expire,” the statement said. Last September, the pair had settled the RFID portion of the dispute, with today’s announcement resolving the non-RFID wireless portion.…

Hewlett-Packard unveiled a memory chip the size of a tomato seed on Monday in its Palo Alto laboratories. The tiny chip, called the Memory Spot, can be attached unobtrusively to any object and carry media or data. HP is positioning the chips as a direct alternative to RFID.

“It has some of the characteristics of RFID but it’s very different because it’s orders of magnitude different in bandwidth,” said Howard Taub, vice president and associate director of HP Laboratories, told PCMagazine. “It’s like comparing a monkey and a human. There are some similarities but the capabilities are very different.” The Memory Spot has a 10 megabits-per-second data-transfer rate and can store up to 4 megabits of data, although the demonstration chips stored only 256 kilobits. The chip has an integrated antenna, which is why it is so much smaller than an RFID chip, which gets most of its size from the separately attached antennae. It receives power through inductive coupling from a special read-write device that extracts data from the memory on the chip. RFIDUpdate had an excellent analysis on Memory Spot versus Gen2 while PC Magazine did a good write-up of the announcement itself.…

Being one of the world’s leading advocates for RFID hasn’t shielded Tesco—nor Wal-Mart, for that matter—from feeling RFID’s growing pains.

While Tesco has been playing the typical chicken-and-egg game with suppliers on who will initially fund tagging all products, it’s had to quietly cut back its RFID efforts as it is trying to work with European UHF regulations, said Raghu Das, CEO of European RFID consulting firm IDTechEx.

Tesco has been enjoying a strong four percent revenue boost from RFID-enabled inventory improvements, but it’s been applying the tags by hand, which is not a tactic that can be continued indefinitely. Tesco, which ordered 2,000 RFID readers just two years ago, is in the RFID game for the longterm and is begging suppliers to take a more aggressive position. To read the full story, please click here.…

The International Organization for Standards (ISO) on Wednesday officially embraced the UHF Gen2 efforts from EPCGlobal in what an EPC statement termed "a significant milestone." (Dare I ask what a trivial milestone would be? Perhaps they should have said that it was a very unique significant milestone.)

In other RFID standards news, Wednesday also saw an announcement from Brussels of a 3-year R&D and training RFID exercise dubbed the BRIDGE (Building Radio frequency IDentification solutions for the Global Environment) project. Bridge is being supported by the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP6) with €7.5 million funding. Read more...

Wal-Mart Canada’s new RFID program will be entirely voluntary, which is the latest tealeaf suggesting that the chain’s new CIO is adopting a gentler tone.

This is all going on with the background that Wal-Mart is still quietly struggling with its RFID efforts. “Wal-Mart is having significant problems. There are problems inside of Wal-Mart,” such as distribution centers that “can’t handle” Gen2 communications, one observer said. “They’re looking to replace those readers. They can’t comply with the latest standards.” To read the full story, please click here.…

Despite the traditional mantra that item-level tagging makes sense when the price drops below 5-cents and preferably 1-cent, a major global consulting firm found the average price was 40 cents, compared with an average 18-cent price for pallet and case tags.

The IDTechEx analysis said that much of that can be explained because of the need for much more robust and larger memory tags for tracking parts and equipment that some of those early testers—such as aviation leaders Rolls Royce and Lockheed Martin–required. To read the full story, please click here.…

A beverage company is now selling RFID attachments for bottles, which analyzes the bottle's tilt angle and duration to calculate how much liquor is being poured and whether the bartender is sticking to the recipe.

On a busy Saturday night, a good bartender makes a lot of money for the bar's owner, but an overly generous bartender—or one fond of pouring free drinks for friends--can cost the bar's owner even more.Read more...

Broadcom has introduced an RFID chip that won’t transmit sensitive information until it authenticates with a fingerprint reader. Citing applications included physical access and contactless payment, the semiconductor player rolled out the BCM5890 in a partnership with biometrics company Privaris, according to a report in RFIDUpdate. “A key feature is that the approved fingerprint information is stored on the fob, so the authentication is all done ‘on-board’ and the system does not need to transmit the scanned fingerprint to a remote database for verification,” the story said. To read the full RFID Update story, please click here.…

Giftcards are quickly becoming an extremely popular retail payment option, but the traditional analog cards suffer from a lack of security when used for E-Commerce. One company has a two-factor—and possibly three-factor—way of dealing with that.

Imx Solutions said the products are initially being used by Sears, Kmart and CompUSA along with television’s Ultimate Shopping Network (USN). The giftcard is a mini-CD that uses a company-issued–and hidden–password plus it takes a page from the one-time-password-issuing devices because it has a series of encrypted codes on it that needs to match up with a list of encrypted codes on an Imx server and the correct code “changes twice a minute.” To read the full story, please click here.…

Gentag is touting a way to add classic active-tag capabilities (including temperature sensors) to lower-cost passive RFID tags.

A statement from the Washington, D.C., IP development firm describes the patented offering as " an ultra-linear, low-power single-calibration temperature-sensor circuit that can be directly integrated on any chip for either the Gen 2 UHF or the 13.56 MHz global RFID markets."Read more...

Korea’s second-largest supermarket chain is experimenting with RFID tags on shopping carts and baskets, subsidized with $300,000 from the South Korean government, according to a story in Silicon.com. Samsung Tesco last year equipped its shopping trolleys and baskets with RFID chips to track customer movements at each of its 69 stores, the story reported. The supermarket chain is a joint venture established in 1999 between consumer electronics giant Samsung and UK supermarket operator Tesco.

The story quoted Samsung Tesco CIO Lee Kang-Tee as saying the company has had to deal with a few small technical problems. For instance, off-the-shelf RFID readers that were used to pick up radio signals from the roaming trolleys could not fit into the store shelves. As a result, company engineers had to custom-make readers into a smaller size. To read the full Silicon.com story, please click here.…

As contactless payment devices become more adopted by consumers, retailers need to be ready to handle them and, rightly or wrongly, take the blame for associated problems. Popgadget just did a fascinating look at Citibank’s latest RFID PayPass card. It references a Gearlog post about the pros and cons of such a device, along with a hacker’s take on contactless card security.

Little of this is new, as we reported a year ago Shell Canada’s experiments about contactess payment security. But as these cards start to come into common usage, it’s not a bad idea to look at the latest threats and be prepared to deal with the complaints. Trust me: they’ll come. It’s still worth doing, but the easier a system is to use, the more problematic its security profile will be.…

Considering the glacial pace that is the world of global standards bodies, it's not surprising that developers need to think far ahead. But as the politically-complicated RFID community has just started getting used to RFID's Gen2, some are already prepping for Gen3. That's making some in the industry feelings a little skittish--or perhaps nauseous.

"Some people are so committed to RFID Gen2" that talk of Gen3 "is like garlic to a vampire," said Kevin Ashton, a VP at ThingMagic and co-founder of MIT's Auto-ID Center. Read more...

Limitations with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology have delayed a nationwide rollout at supermarket giant Tesco by several years, according to a report in VNU’s Computing. Tesco had planned to install RFID tags and readers in 1,400 shops and 30 distribution centres by the middle of this year, but has so far completed just 40 stores and one depot.

Instead of tagging individual products, it will now permanently tag transport items such as cages and trolleys and install the technology over several years. The supermarket says it has struggled with radio frequency standards, a high concentration of readers in the warehouse that affect performance, slow read speeds and low tag quality. To read the full story in Computing, please click here.…

Fresh from its merger talks with Siemens, Nokia is announcing a major smartcard company, the first large-scale mobile payment trial in China and the killing of its CDMA deal with Sanyo.

On Tuesday (June 27), it announced a deal with Giesecke & Devrient, the world's second largest producer of smart cards, to form a company that will " provide services to the NFC ecosystem by enabling consumer applications, such as credit cards or transport tickets, to be securely and easily downloaded over-the-air to NFC enabled mobile devices."Read more...

An Israeli company says it is developing a way to mix chemicals with clothing fibers to create a very-difficult-to-replicate product identification and tracking system. Asks News.com: Why attach an RFID chip to a shirt when you can identify the shirt through undetectable, invisible chemicals mixed into the fibers?

The News.com story quotes CrossID CEO Moshe Glickstein as saying that his company has devised a way to put a chemical signature into fabrics, labels, inks, boxes and other materials. When a hand or door scanner tuned to a specific frequency is pointed at an item, chemicals mixed inside the item get excited and give off a signal. The signal, which differs with the addition or subtraction of different substances, then serves as an ID for the item.…

For those who track such things, Epson Electronics America (and its Seiko parent) have now jumped onto the RuBee bandwagon. To be precise, they’ve been on the bandwagon the whole time, but they decided to publicly confirm it now. Epson is specifically the silicon partner for the key company behind RuBee, Visible Assets.…