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  Derek Du 03:32 on July 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: China (14), NFC (4), NOKIA, RF-SIM (2), RFID (17)   

  Nokia’ fight on hands, NFC Smart phones 

  Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s new executive vice president, has announced that it will incorporate NFC into all new smart phones next year. The world’s largest mobile phone maker just lowered its 2010 earnings outlook in June, and integrated its own smart phone sector and Ovi service, with a view to developing a competing smart phone against Apple and Blackberry.

  “we have a fight on our hands,” The new vice president Anssi Vanjoki wrote. “The first battle is to bring you products and services you will want to own and use, to inspire you to create and do new things in this ever-changing digital world. I’m ready to take this challenge on, and so is the entire Nokia team.”

  Maybe for Mr.Anssi Vanjoki, to incorporate NFC into smart phones would be his first battle. According to the statistics from market research firm IDC, Nokia sold 67.7 million smart phones by last year, almost double the number of RIM did (3450 million). Therefore, once a significant number of handsets have NFC then the technology will take off, and by the time Apple and others gets round to embedding NFC into their mobile device, Nokia will be a technology leader again.

  In China, Although the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information has not decided yet a national mobile payment standard between 2.4G and 13.56MHz, but with the tendency of the three major carriers have adopted the NFC standard, market prospects became clear. Now with the Nokia’ new smart phone policy, it can be said, NFC almost won the standards battle.

   

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  Derek Du 15:04 on July 1, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: FIFA world cup, RFID (17)   

  Do we need Goal-line technology? CTRUS football by AGENT 

  FIFA chief Sepp Blatter on Tuesday apologised to England and Mexico for the refree errors that led to their World Cup exit. Both the teams suffered from refereeing errors in their Round of 16 losing their games to Germany and Argentina, respectively.

  English Player Frank Lampard’s goal was denied even though his shot clearly crossed the line, in Germany’s 4-1 win over England during Sunday’s clash. Blatter assured a discussion on goal-line technology in July 4 meeting of International FA Board.

  

  The introduction of goal-line technology use on the real pitch has never stopped, those who oppose the use of goal-line technology always claim that football game got its own “tradition and charm”, but in my opinion, the “impartiality” should be the first priority before those “tradition and charm “.

  Actually, a new football with the name of “CTRUS” which designed by AGENT, could ensure the “impartiality” of football game. CTRUS functional principle is based on the mechanical properties of its materials. it is composed by an inner structure (skelle-core) and an outer net-embedded shell, made out of reinforced elastomers. In addition, CTRUS provides added functionality controlled by the electronic components in its nucleus which communicate wirelessly(GPS/RFID) with control stations at the stadium:

  - inner light, color changes at critical game situations (goal, offside and out of bounds).
  - recording of kick force and travel speed.
  - location of the ball relative to the court (interactive detection system via GPS / RFID).
  - P.O.V. camera footage (software stabilized image).

  

  

  

   
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  Derek Du 01:19 on June 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: China (14), E-Wallet (2), Mobile phone (2), Mobile Wallet (4), NFC (4), RF-SIM (2), RFID (17), RFID market (3)   

  Battle of RF-SIM and NFC 

  Recently, China Mobile formally Suspend RF-SIM mobile phone payment project (Mobile Wallet), the project will not be restart within two years for a conservative estimate. This result is a direct contest between China Mobile and China Unionpay, the only domestic credit card organization in China, which they support RF-SIM and NFC (Near Field Communication) separately.

  RF-SIM technology led by China Mobile use 2.4 G frequencies, which is not compatible with NFC (13.56MHz frequency) use by China Unionpay. Although China Mobile has the world’s largest mobile phone user group, but It’s too hard for China Mobile’s 2.4G standard to become primary frequency wireless communication technology in Chinese market as UnionPay’s 13.56MHz technology has being widely used by the financial POS, bus, subway, gas stations and more other fields. If China Mobile continues to push 2.4G standard, it means that not only RF-SIM card need to purchase one by one, but also full replacement of POS machines across China. The costs will reach hundreds of millions dollars.

  According to the statistics of Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information, China’s mobile phone users reached 780 million in the first quarter. If 40% of Chinese mobile phone users choose the mobile payment service like in Japan and South Korea, China will have more than 300 million users to pay by mobile. Different wireless communication frequency standards will lead to redundant investment and other issues in such huge market. To solve this, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Technology is to promote a mobile payment standard system. Although the result is unsettled, but the industry view was expressed that, with the suspension of China Mobile’s RF-SIM project, 13.56MHz NFC technology is likely to be the final winner.

  It is uncertain that who will become leader in the field of mobile payments in China, but one thing is certain, that no one can dominate the market, only to cooperate together for a bigger cake.

  Elin is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Elin 11:30 on June 29, 2010 Permalink

    Oh, so China Mobile has officially stated that they will not commercialize their mobile payment service based on RFID?

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  Derek Du 18:54 on May 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Children (2), China (14), EXPO 2010 (3), RFID (17), RFID bracelet, Safety (3)   

  Use technology to protect children 

  Just over a month’s time, a series of campus massacre against children suddenly become the most focus of attention in China. How can we protect our children? This is a big question mark in all parent’ mind, after all, children are everything to us. My answer is to use technology to improve the protection of the children, hope that more and more companies find a better solution via RFID or other related technologies to archive that.

  Give an example here, Abilia experience center, the children’s professional experience center from the Shanghai World Expo which selected 25 representative future careers for 7-15 years old children to experience growth in the fun. As the area of Abilia experience center reach 4,200 square meters and parents cannot follow their child to enter, so the RFID technology has introduced in order to track children’s location within Abilia center. Each child will wear an RFID bracelet on their hand at the entrance, and each child’s RFID bracelet has a matching bracelet also distributed to the child’s parents. The RFID readers across whole center can read the children’ RFID bracelets and track their location; the parents can also obtain the specific location of their children by scan their bracelet in front of RFID kiosk just outside the entrance.

  Actually, such technology has being used by “BabyBoss professional experience city” in Taiwan two years ago. Our children will be more effective protected by more application of such technology.

   
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  Derek Du 01:59 on April 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: China (14), Competitions, Internet of Things (2), ShangHai (3)   

  Creativity and application of China’s Internet of Things Competition 

  From Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Wuxi “Internet of things” Technology Park at August 2009, to “speed up the Internet of things technology development in China” writes into the annual government report by March 2010. The concept of “Internet of Things” has never been taken so seriously like today in China.

  On 27^th April, the first “Creativity and application of China’s Internet of Things Competition” was officially launched in Shanghai. The purpose of this competition is to find good business ideas about Internet of Things and promote the applications on the Internet of Things. Government officials from Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Chinese Academy of Sciences have attended the opening ceremony.

  Competition will last 3 months, creativity and application is the two sub-parts of the competition.All creative work, commercial design, application examples and innovative business models about the Internet of Things are welcome nationwide, the final winners will be announced in September this year. Will you join in? click here then.

   
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  Derek Du 02:35 on April 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: China (14), Disneyland, Hong Kong, RFID (17)   

  CostuMagic, RFID system from Hong Kong Disneyland 

  Hong Kong Disneyland is the world’s fifth Disneyland and reaches millions of tourists every year. As one of the largest “wardrobe” in Hong Kong, more than 200,000 apparel and accessories has managed by the Disneyland. More than 6500 pieces of costume distributed to 2,500 cast members daily, and every single member needs 3 minutes to register to get their costume. You can imagine that 50 Disneyland colleagues waiting in the dressing room which just like shopping in a supermarket checkout point.

  Since September last year, a self-service costumes borrow system (CostuMagic) has introduced to Hong Kong Disneyland which using radio frequency identification technology, the time of lend costumes to employees has being greatly saved. By CostuMagic, cast members just need to pick up their costume from dressing room, scan their staff card and costume (RFID tag inside) at one of four sets of self-services kiosks which outside the dressing room, and… that’s it! Plus the system will notice cast member if they choose wrong size of costumes from their actual size, awesome! According to Disneyland official, this RFID system enhanced the efficiency over half.

  CostuMagic, the success of RFID technology in Hong Kong Disneyland has awarded “RFID application and creativity silver” by Hong Kong Article Numbering Association, and is now being used at Disneyland Florida.

   
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  Derek Du 09:07 on March 15, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: China (14), EXPO 2010 (3), RFID Ticket, ShangHai (3), TICKET (2)   

  RFID Technology for Shanghai Expo 2010 ticketing system 

  The FIFA World Cup 2006 at Germany has used  tickets of  built-in RFID chips to prevent fraud  ticket,  3.2 million tickets sold  for  64 matches. 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is the first ever Olympic Games to use the RFID technologies on game tickets,  7 million tickets are loaded with RFID chips developed by China itself. This year, the upcoming May 1 opening of the Shanghai World Expo will also use RFID  as anti-counterfeiting  technology,  the six months Expo is  expected to attract  70  million  visitors from around the world, their ticketing system will be the largest application of RFID tickets ever.

  In order to gain the experience of RFID technology use on ticketing system,  Shanghai has experienced from small-scale demonstration from  2005  onwards.  For  four  consecutive  years in Shanghai at the Masters Cup tennis tournament,  the full implementation of the RFID ticketing system, which also is the world’s first successful case of RFID used on large sports competition tickets.

  The RFID tickets for the Expo are not  only play  a  defensive  role  from  fake tickets,  while the RFID readers around the Expo Park can read the visitors’ basic information through their ticket.  In case of emergency, the security team can easily find a certain visitor  and his certain position within the park; more quickly and effectively respond can be made by use this technology.

  In  case to  avoid  the  long  waiting  queue outside some popular exhibition hall, visitors can also use their RFID tickets to reserve their “seat”. 180 self-reserve machines located throughout the Expo Park, visitors only need to choose their favorite venue,  and then swipe their tickets on the self-reserve machine, a small receipt will print out which indicate a specified time to visit the Hall.

  More than above,  by use the RFID ticket,  visitor  can  rent  an  umbrella  or  even  a  wheelchair.  Therefore,  if  you  are  going  to the Shanghai Expo within the next few months, take a good care of your entry ticket and enjoy the “Better City, Better Life”.

   
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  Derek Du 18:05 on July 11, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Children (2), Safety (3)   

  RFID Children Safety Network 

  In 2007, after 3 years old British girl Madeleine McCann was missing in Portugal, the UK media evoked a discussion on how to protect the children’s safety. A numbers of mobile network operators also started providing some new services, such as Kids OK mobile phone tracking, i-Kids and Teddy – fone to enable parents to track their children by mobile phone through GPRS. At the same time, the application of RFID technology on children’s safety has been introduced by several companies. However, due to high prices and limited scope of application, it has not been widely used.

  At Far East, as a result of increasing crimes, the RFID technology in the field of children’s safety has been recognized and applied.

  In South Korea, Daejeon known as “technology city”, started a project called “safety net for children” in 2008. The project was about to embed a RFID tag at each student’s school bag from 10 selected schools in Daejeon. A RFID reader is provided at every school gate. When students are in and out of school, the automatic cognitive process will send parents a SMS.  Then parents will be able to know their child is in the school or on the way home. Similarly, at a Japanese city Osaka, the Department of Education chose a school as an example: the students’ school bags were embedded with RFID tags , so that their parents can track them in and out of school.

  In China, there is no action yet from the government to promote RFID technology on children’s safety issue, but the author believes there will be a very large market for RFID technology on children’s safety in China. The reasons are:

  1_ Base on China’s 1.3 billion populations, the number of school students is high. According to 2003 survey, there are 425,800 primary schools in China, and 15 million school-age children.

  2_Due to the unbalanced economic development in China, the public security level is “less than satisfactory”. In May 2007, a program called “social visibility” (Phoenix Satellite Television) reported 20 million children went missing in China every year ,and 60 million children have not been found yet.

  3_Since one-child policy started in China, it has been 30 years. It resulted that most of the school-age children is the only child in family, and more likely is that student’s parents are also the only child from their families, which means that this child is the hope of three families. In these families, it is believed that children’s safety is always the first priority, and parents would not mind to pay anything for their children’s safety.

  4_ Telecommunications industry is well developed in China. The SMS cost can be as much cheaper as possible.

  However, popularizing a technology is a long process. The only shortcut might be obtaining the support from government. For example, in the United States, it is required that the production of all children’s products (specifically refers to all products for children under the age of 13) and its package must be embedded a permanent “track label” from 14^th August, 2009 (Chapter 103, “Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act”). This is an good example and indicate that governments have been aware that RFID technology in the field of children’s safety can play a more important role.

  Perhaps one day when the Chinese Government promulgates the similar rule for children’s safety, it is a signal for a rapid development of RFID technology in China.

  For all RFID companies, however, they cannot just wait for the signal.

   
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  Derek Du 16:51 on July 11, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: China (14), Railway, RFID (17), TICKET (2)   

  RFID to achieve Real-name train ticket in China ? 

  Chunyun refers to the extremely high traffic load of transportation in China around the time of Chinese new year. The high traffic load usually begins 15 days before the Lunar New Year, and lasts for around 40 days. This period is also called Spring Festival travel season, or Chunyun period. The number of passengers during the Chunyun period has exceeded the population of China, hitting the 2-billion mark in 2006.

  Due to the basic nature of Chinese railway tickets and the loosely set limitations on the number of “standing tickets” ,Scalpers profit greatly during the Chunyun period. Organizations of scalpers have emerged, and the scalpers inside the sometimes intricate network work collectively to make the most gain out of the tickets. They pick up tickets in great numbers minutes after they go on sale, and then deal them out in and around the railway station at highly inflated prices.

  The Chinese government tried a lot of ways to stop the Scalpers, but the effect was not obvious. Many people and media has suggested using a real-name ticket system in China. Actually, the real-name system was suggested for many years,but the railway departments always use various excuses to reject it out. Programs and technologies should not be the problem, Because the market has a lot of very good technology can solve this problem, RFID technology is one of them.