Consolidation & Acquisition Spree!!

Gilbane reports ECM Acquisition Week pointing out to merger and acquisition news this week!
- Hummingbird & RedDot
- Trados & SDL
- Infodata & McDonald Bradley
- Stellent & e-Onehundred Group
The RFID industry is just starting to move out of the start-up stage - The logical next step in that is some consolidation.Even as uses for the digital barcodes and tracking chips proliferate, the radio frequency identification industry may be on the verge of a shakeup that could hit the Dallas area harder than others. Experts say that while consolidations, bankruptcies and mergers may sound traumatic, they would actually indicate the industry is maturing. The industry is growing faster.
For example,135 companies had exhibits at the RFID World conference in Grapevine, Texas, earlier this year compared with 80 last year in Denver, and the show floor at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center was crammed with more than 3,000 attendees. In September, Symbol Technologies bought RFID firm Matrics. Last month, VeriSign bought radio frequency consulting firm R4 Global Solutions. Neither of those deals involved Texas companies, but given the concentration of radio frequency identification companies in the Dallas area, industry experts say it's only a matter of time before deals start closing closer to home. Tony Sabetti, director of retail-supply-chain products for the RFID division at Texas Instruments, said there are about 40 to 50 companies in the Dallas area focused solely on radio frequency technology.Many of the new firms sprang up to cater to companies trying to meet Wal-Mart Stores RFID mandate. Wal-Mart has already required its largest suppliers to start using radio frequency technology, and is now pushing its smaller suppliers to adopt it as well. While many suppliers simply did the bare minimum to comply initially, they now hope to use radio frequency tags and readers to help their own supply chains operate as efficiently as Wal-Mart's. The less sophisticated start-up radio frequency firms that just stick tags on boxes without helping a company overhaul its supply chain are going to see demand decline.