[05/17/07]
Topaz, designed and developed by British firm, Innovision Research & Technology, was used by the overall winner of Track B - 'Most Innovative NFC Proposal of the Year 2007' - at the first European NFC Competition held last month as part of the NFC Developers Summit at the Wireless Information Multimedia Applications (WIMA) 2007 event in Monaco.
Topaz, mandated last year by the NFC Forum as the Type 1 NFC tag, proved to be a popular choice at the NFC Competition and was the tag of choice for the Track B winners, the 'Seeingeyephone', an innovative use of NFC by the Technical Research Center of Finland, VTT.
The project is aimed at visually impaired customers who are unable to read product information in shops. The Topaz tag containing an ID and address with product-specific data, such as the price, use-by date and nutritional values, is simply attached to the shelf next to each product. When the customer holds an NFC-enabled phone up to the tag, the text-based information is retrieved and the phone's text-to-speech synthesiser feeds the information directly to the user in their chosen language.
Innovision's Topaz tag, popular among NFC developers for it's memory size, low-cost capabilities and flexibility across a wide range of NFC applications, was used by many of the NFC Competition's 21 finalists, including France's MIS MDBS for its HOTELNOVA and the Institute of Electronic Business from the University of Arts in Berlin for its Mobile Sales Assistant (MSA) for retailers application.
"The NFC Competition is all about promoting innovation and excellence in NFC service implementations, both now and for the future," said Marc Borrett, Business Development Director at Innovision Research & Technology. "We were inspired not only by the creativity and practicality of some of the applications on display, but excited by the very positive response we got to our Topaz tag and the fact that it was used by the Track B winner and many of the finalists."
About Innovision Research & Technology plc
Innovision Research & Technology plc, is a leading NFC/RFID IC Design and solutions provider. At the heart of the emerging Near Field Communication (NFC) market, designing and developing solutions for the mobile handset and consumer device sectors the company also focuses on RFID and ultra low-cost Integrated Circuit (IC) and electronic design.
Innovision R&T develops innovative technologies and technology applications for commercialisation and then licenses the technology on to its customers who incorporate it into their own products. The company's work with customers includes pre-engineering studies, building of prototypes and complete product development through to production, including full custom silicon chip design.
Innovision R&T products include Topaz, mandated by the NFC Forum as the NFC number one tag format, Jewel for mass transit ticketing applications, and "io", the world's smallest standards compatible near field RFID reader.
Headquartered in the UK , the company was established in 1994 and is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: INN ).
For an overview of Innovision, NFC and Topaz, visit: www.innovision-group.com.
About the European NFC Competition
Called 'Touching the Future', the first European NFC Competition took place on 18/19 April at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco . Launched by the NFC Forum (www.nfc-forum.org) in partnership with the SmartTouch project (www.smarttouch.org), it is designed to promote innovation and excellence in NFC service implementations throughout Europe . Sponsors included: Nokia, Innovision Research & Technology and NXP.
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