Tokyo, Japan - OMRON Corporation (TOKYO: 6645; ADR: OMRNY) has announced that it will extend its UHF RFID reader/writer V750 product line to include versions for use in China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Mexico and Brazil. The products will be released as they are developed, with the first scheduled to begin shipping from December 2007.

As international RFID standardization progresses, countries worldwide are amending their telecommunications and related laws to open up the UHF band for RFID use, while government-led projects are driving the implementation of RFID systems in a range of industries. OMRON's decision to expand the V750 product range globally reflects the company's expectations for growth opportunities in manufacturing, distribution and asset management applications, particularly in China, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

"Our US customer base includes a number of Wal-Mart suppliers whose manufacturing sites are located in Mexico, Brazil, China and Asia-Pacific. It is in these regions that RFID is really taking off now," said Masa Kameyama, US Division Manager of OMRON RFID. "Our V750 platform has already built a solid reputation in the US, Japan and South Korea. We are delighted that we can now offer this tried-and-tested product to customers operating in a wider range of countries, and so support them at both ends of their supply chain."

OMRON's V750 is a high-powered, fixed-type reader/writer. In addition to high-speed processing, the V750 features sophisticated functions that allow deployment in a variety of situations; for example, its auto tuning facility self-adjusts read parameters according to tag density, while a robust dense reader mode effectively shuts out interference. The V750 also has practical functions that can reduce information processing loads and wiring in upstream systems and simplify setup, tuning and operation.

In January 2005, OMRON released its V740 Series of reader/writers, targeting the US retail supply chain market. In response to the establishment of the EPCglobal Class1 Generation2 standard (ISO/IEC 18006-C), OMRON launched its Gen2-compliant V750 Series. To date, OMRON has released versions of the V750 reader/writer for North America (the USA and Canada) in October 2006, Japan in December 2006 and South Korea in February 2007.