Symbol Technologies Expands Enterprise Mobility Portfolio with New RFID Products and Solutions

First Commercially Available EPC-Enabled Turnkey Dock Door Portal Solution Eases RFID Installations

Symbol's First RFID Handheld Extends Flagship Mobile Computing Family

Symbol Technologies, Inc. , The Enterprise Mobility Company™, today expanded its end-to-end RFID offerings by introducing the new and its new rugged mobile computer, the . These new products, which are on display this week at the EPCglobal US Conference 2004 in Baltimore (booth #103 and #106), expand Symbol's position in Advanced Data Capture technologies and provide mobility solutions to a range of markets across the retail supply chain.

"RFID must be deployed as part of a complete system that allows organizations to capture, move and manage information to and from the point of business activity," said Phil Lazo, vice president and general manager of Symbol's RFID Infrastructure Division. "Symbol's introduction of the DC400 and MC9000-G with RFID further demonstrates that RFID is not a stand-alone technology which is disconnected from the network and unmanageable."

Easy-To-Install RFID Portal Solution

Symbol's DC400 is the industry's first EPC-enabled turnkey RFID portal solution designed specifically for industrial dock doors and portal environments. The DC400 is an easy-to-install, remotely managed 900MHz RFID solution that will allow manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, and retail stores to read class 0 (read only and read/write) and class 1 RFID tags at all shipping and receiving points, without human intervention. The ruggedized design of the DC400 portal solution was created specifically for the harsh environmental conditions of a warehouse.

The scalable and cost-effective DC400 portal solution includes multi-protocol RFID readers and high-performance antennas designed to enable organizations to achieve inventory and supply chain optimization by reading RFID tags on cartons and pallets as they are loaded in and out of trucks and containers. The reader infrastructure, based on Symbol's multi-protocol with Ethernet connectivity and advanced SNMP and remote management capabilities, can be upgraded as new standards evolve in the marketplace. The DC400 also comes with an API set for standard and customized integration with management systems for performance monitoring and operational visibility.

Rugged Handheld with Integrated RFID and Bar Code Readers

Symbol today also announced the introduction of its new rugged mobile computer, the MC9000-G with RFID. With the MC9000-G RFID handheld, retail, manufacturing, and logistics organizations will be able to deploy RFID-enabled mobile computing solutions designed to improve corporate efficiencies and productivity by tracking objects and goods in motion throughout the supply chain. Some of the possible applications for the Symbol MC9000-G with RFID include inventory management for assembly lines; price verification by retail personnel; warehouse management of pallets and cartons using both RFID and bar codes; and baggage tracking by airline personnel.

The MC9000-G with RFID leverages the same hardware platform as Symbol's MC9000-G rugged mobile computer, while adding support for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) -- the most popular RFID standard in an RFID handheld capable of reading EPC tags at distances as far as 10 feet.

Symbol's new lightweight interrogator antenna was designed, tested and manufactured to withstand repeated six-foot drops to concrete. It also features directional (70 degree forward) field generation to enable users to isolate the RFID tags they are interested in reading. In addition, because the MC9000-G with RFID is based on EPCglobal's RFID specification, the RFID reader operates in the U.S./Canada-based 902-928 MHz spectrum.

"The Symbol MC9000-G with RFID enables employees working at the edge of the enterprise to play a critical role in enterprise mobility by capturing information from both RFID tags and bar codes, helping them to move information faster, so real-time decisions can be made," continued Lazo. "RFID technology must be part of a tightly integrated solution that combines both mobile and fixed RFID readers with other enterprise mobility elements in order to enable organizations to capture, move and manage critical information from the dock door to the retail floor."