Allen Nogee Quotations

RFID is going in the back door? Absolutely.

Base station component makers are being asked to make cheaper components that last as long or longer than previous versions, and to develop them when the unit volumes required aren't fully known, because demand for base stations isn't known. Base stations continue to grow more dense, with more channels per card and smaller overall form-factors, while consuming less total power and requiring less air conditioning, or no air conditioning in many cases.

The areas that still lack cell coverage are spread out and sparsely populated.

When people are looking for a phone or PDA, generally they think of one product at a time, ... It's hard enough to wade through all the selections of one device. When you combine the two together, it can be almost overwhelming.

This segment will account for the largest number of tags and labels from 2005 through 2010.

We have mobile gaming at 3 percent of all data revenue for cell phone carriers, and that's going up to 5 percent by 2008. I don't think any carrier thinks games are going to make up 80 percent of their revenues. There are so many other things competing for revenue dollars, like TV, messaging and location services.

It's where they have to be to stay up with the cutting edge. It certainly does seem to be approaching the low-level desktop computer in terms of functions.

In general, people haven't really taken strongly to these combination products, including phone in a PDA and PDA in a phone,

If Wal-Mart wants to tag their cartons, I don't think you'll see many privacy advocates bothered by that.

In the U.S., with just a few transmitters at 1.4 GHz and tiny receiver antennas, coverage has to be a concern. And with digital TV, it either works or it doesn't.

By far the biggest RFID segment in coming years will be Supply Chain Management. This segment will account for the largest number of tags/labels from 2005 through 2010. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has spurred this projected growth by mandating that its top 100 (and, later its top 300) suppliers begin to use RFID.

I do think we are going to see more combinations as time goes by. What we are seeing now are the first attempts, and customers haven't taken to those combination products as much as the carriers would hope.

I don't see a lot of fear. Certainly people hope that they'll get it worked out.

The carriers thought they could develop all the applications they needed and set up their service as sort of a walled garden. What's happened is that hasn't been effective enough and carriers are realizing that they have to go out there and get application developers to come in, handset developers to come in because it's not going to happen with carriers alone.

The carriers are just shooting in the dark. They're not really sure which services will take off, so they'll try a little bit of everything.