Intermec is offering a trade-in program for older equipment. You can earn cash rebates for turning in old equipment and buying new stuff from Intermec.

Some of the items covered in the trade-in include: RFID readers, printers, access points, scanners. Rebates start at $50 each for scanners and access points, up to $200 for RFID readers, computers or printers.

But if you turn in a competitor's product, you can double the amount of the rebate. And if you buy a service contract you get an even bigger trade-in value.

The offer is good through December 15, 2006.

Companies offer trade-in mechanisms because it allows them to in effect cut prices temporarily, but protects (they hope) their regular pricing levels and makes it harder to compare apples to apples with their competitors.

Usually companies use pricing incentives such as trade-in rebates when:

(1) introducing a new product and they are trying to get customers to upgrade to new, higher-priced models;

(2) sales are flat and they are trying to jumpstart them; and/or

(3) the user base is small and they are trying steal market share.

It looks to me like it's more likely a combination of 2 and 3 above. Intermec just recently announced its financial results for Q2 2006. Sales did increase over the prior year, but profits were down somewhat. It appears the company feels the need to take action to improve those financial results.

Sounds like the vendor is motivated, for all you RFID buyers out there. Might be a good opportunity to expand or upgrade your RFID deployments.