Until nearly the dog days of August, Symbol Technologies ( www.symbol.com) had maintained a fairly low profile in RFID. But with its acquisition of RFID supplier Matrics for $230 million, Symbol is no longer running below anyone's radar in the exploding RFID arena.

"It is Symbol's goal to lead in the RFID industry," says William Nuti, Symbol's president and CEO in announcing the acquisition. "The teaming of Matrics and Symbol gives us the 1 + 1 = 5 scenario that provides us the opportunity to lead in this space."

The acquisition, which is scheduled to close this month, gives Symbol access to the only fixed-position, multi-protocol reader in the market today, as well as Matrics' tag production capability. Until now, Symbol had been developing a handheld RFID reader. However, that has yet to be commercialized.

"While the predominance of our expected sales in RFID will be in readers, we will also be in the tag business," says Nuti.

In addition, Matrics is a leader in pilots and more advanced RFID projects in both aviation and the supply chain. It is this combination, says Nuti, that was so attractive to Symbol.

Saying there can be no RFID islands, Nuti expects to fully integrate the technology with Symbol's overall enterprise mobility strategy. In fact, he says such systems will be essential to move RFID from pilots to full-scale implementations that will have a direct impact on supply chain efficiencies.