RFID: Retail experiments get underway

There's been a recent upsurge in retailers' experiments with RFID tags to track products. The first major "live" test with fresh produce started today at three Keikyu Store supermarkets in Kanagawa prefecture; it's limited at the moment to a couple of popular vegetables, which shoppers can swipe over a reader to get information about when they were picked, usage of chemical fertilizers, etc.

Chips used are Hitachi's 0.4mm x 0.4mm 'b5-chip. The test is being run by the T-Engine Forum, the body headed by Tokyo University professor Ken Sakaguchi that exists to promote the homegrown TRON operating system. As DoCoMo and other cellphone carriers move away from using TRON OS in their handsets in favour of Linux and Symbian, it looks like the TEF is aiming to establish TRON as the OS for RFID readers and other product tracking hardware.

Mitsukoshi is also to lead the department store sector in introducing RFID tags this autumn for apparel products, renewing its POS system in favour of RFID readers. Experiments start at the end of this month. With the department stores joining the electronics, apparel, books and food retailers, the switch to RFID for product management is picking up speed.

[Via various media reports]