Motorola has announced a strategic relationship between the RFID division of its Enterprise Mobility business and Intelleflex.

The companies will undertake cooperative development activities, combining their respective technologies to create new product platforms to be offered by both companies, enabling each to deliver a powerful set of new RFID solutions to customers worldwide, said an official spokesman.

In addition, Motorola Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Motorola, invested in the Series C financing round in Intelleflex along with new investor Arcapita Ventures.

“Many of the most important emerging applications of RFID technology depend upon extended capability solutions, with features such as large user memory, long range operation, advanced security architectures, robust performance in difficult RF environments and sensors for environmental data capture of items like temperature exposure,” said vice-president and general manager of Advanced Data Capture, Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Bob Sanders.

“By delivering these types of solutions, we will be able to better serve our customers in markets like cold-chain distribution and asset tracking. We chose to partner with Intelleflex because they have established themselves as the technology leader in this product category,” Sanders added.

Over the past several years, RFID focus has shifted to closed loop applications, where individual business entities invest in technology to solution a targeted business problem. Many of these issues, such as high-value asset tracking, yard management, cold supply chain and parts maintenance require the features and performance of an extended capability RFID platform.

“We are very excited about new business opportunities that will be enabled as a result of this relationship,” said president of Lowry Computer Products Mike Lowry.

“The combination of Motorola’s RFID leadership and Intelleflex’ breakthrough extended capability RFID technology is compelling. It will allow us to deliver powerful new solutions to our current and future customers in automotive, food and drug, electronics, government, healthcare and other industry sectors,” added Lowry.

Motorola and Intelleflex have commenced joint development work that will result in the release of new extended capability RFID products, by both companies, in 2008.

As part of the strategic relationship, Motorola Ventures co-led the Intelleflex Series C investment round with Arcapita Ventures. Existing Intelleflex investors Morgenthaler Ventures, Woodside Fund, Alloy Ventures and Selby Venture Partners also participated. – TradeArabia News Service