GM China will Wait on China's Adoption of Standards

Filed in archive EPC Standards on April 13, 2005

InformationWeek has an intriguing piece about RFID standards and the pace of RFID adoption in China, and how that impacts multi-nationals like General Motors:

"General Motors china will hold off using radio-frequency identification technology in its assembly and supply-chain operations until the Chinese government decides on an in-country standard for the RFID tags, a top GM China official said Monday at the InformationWeek Spring Conference in Amelia Island, Fla.

'Right now, there are no standards,' said GM China CIO Addons Wu. 'There are only rumors about the government establishing a standard, so right now people are not moving very fast' with RFID adoption in China.

GM is now using RFID on a limited scaled for its domestic manufacturing operations in the United States. Like most multinationals expanding into China, the company would like to extend its existing IT tools into that country without having to make major, costly modifications. If China adopts an RFID standard that's different from what's used elsewhere in the world, it could create just such a problem for global companies like GM."

China does not want to adopt a standard that would force Chinese vendors to pay royalties to Western vendors. Get used to hearing about China's growing clout....