Intermec, a 46-year-old firm based in Everett, Wash., manufactures RFID readers, printers, tags and labels, as well as bar-code scanners and mobile computers. With the purchase, Honeywell will acquire all outstanding common shares of Intermec for $10 per share in cash, totaling approximately $600m. This acquisition not only will extend Honeywell Scanning & Mobility's (HSM) mobile computing line, but will also bring a host of RFID products to the company, which had launched only a single RFID-based offering to date, earlier this year.
In June 2012, Honeywell made its debut in the radio frequency identification market, when it released a handheld reader intended for use within retail stores and warehouses. At that time, Taylor Smith, HSM's director of product marketing, indicated that the company has been watching the RFID industry mature, particularly with regard to the growth in item-level tagging of merchandise to improve inventory accuracy. Based on those trends, his company launched an RFID development strategy for the retailer market, by introducing the first of what was intended to be a series of RFID products for that sector.
