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SecurityGeek
“Currently, our users are placing the bridge at the reader side [just like a ...
Bert22306
I'm always in favor of the smarter way of doing things, but unfortunately ...
China Mobile takes SIM card route to e-wallets
Junko Yoshida
9/12/2012 12:45 PM EDT
How Quanray got started
Hao's pedigree is ideal for heading a Chinese startup: He’s well connected with academia, here and in the U.S., as well as Silicon Valley and the Chinese government. He started as a professor at Fudan University, where he still teaches, then went on to direct China’s State Key Lab, a premiere research organization, from 1998 to 2005. He spent 2 ½ years in the U.S. as a visiting associate professor at Stanford University and started two companies while there. Back in China, Hao ran Shanghai Huahong Integrated Circuits Co., a government-funded IC design house that makes smart-card chips.
Hao helped launched Quanray in 2005 along with two friends and three Fudan University grad students. They pooled their own money – 1 million RMB in total – to fund the company while the three students agreed to work for low pay after graduating.
Armed with UHF and HF RFID hardware solutions, Quanray has been supplying chips in China and abroad. The UHF chips are used by a Japanese company for object tracking, while a European company is using Quanray’s HF chip for ticketing, Hao said.
Quanray’s notable design wins in China include supplying chips to China’s high-end liquor company, Wuliangye. A chip in the label of each bottle proves it authenticity, a classic anti-counterfeiting application.
Currently working on a second round of funding, Quanray is hoping to catch a break with its SIM card chips through its partnership with China Mobile. The carrier will begin trials this fall targeting 50,000 students on a campus in Sichuan province.
About 25,000 SIM cards integrated with RFID technology have already been issued, said Hao. Because the chips are relatively cheap, Quanray won’t see an instant revenue bump, but “this model can be duplicated” beyond the China Mobile trials, Hao insisted.
“When it comes to the production technology, we still have a distance to go, especially when we compare ourselves with the leading UHF chip suppliers," he added.
Indeed, Impinj and Alien Technology, the top two UHF RFID chip startups in the U.S., have yet to pull off successful IPOs (they both scrapped their plans in recent years), the odds for success at a tiny RFID chip company based in Shanghai may be small. Still, Hao listed several factors working in his favor: Quanray’s ability to offer a complete RFID solution; lower cost structure (margins of less than 40 percent); and the company's knack for unique solutions like the patented RFID-integrated SIM card.
Current leading UHF RFID vendors like NXP, Impinj and Alien are far ahead of Quanray. If all three features mesh, concluded Hao, “We think we can catch up.”
Related stories:
Slideshow: New (Chinese) handsets you’ve never heard of
iPhone 5 draws praise, iPod gets camera
Yoshida in China: What is the Chinese Dream?
Hao's pedigree is ideal for heading a Chinese startup: He’s well connected with academia, here and in the U.S., as well as Silicon Valley and the Chinese government. He started as a professor at Fudan University, where he still teaches, then went on to direct China’s State Key Lab, a premiere research organization, from 1998 to 2005. He spent 2 ½ years in the U.S. as a visiting associate professor at Stanford University and started two companies while there. Back in China, Hao ran Shanghai Huahong Integrated Circuits Co., a government-funded IC design house that makes smart-card chips.
Hao helped launched Quanray in 2005 along with two friends and three Fudan University grad students. They pooled their own money – 1 million RMB in total – to fund the company while the three students agreed to work for low pay after graduating.
Armed with UHF and HF RFID hardware solutions, Quanray has been supplying chips in China and abroad. The UHF chips are used by a Japanese company for object tracking, while a European company is using Quanray’s HF chip for ticketing, Hao said.
Quanray’s notable design wins in China include supplying chips to China’s high-end liquor company, Wuliangye. A chip in the label of each bottle proves it authenticity, a classic anti-counterfeiting application.
Currently working on a second round of funding, Quanray is hoping to catch a break with its SIM card chips through its partnership with China Mobile. The carrier will begin trials this fall targeting 50,000 students on a campus in Sichuan province.
About 25,000 SIM cards integrated with RFID technology have already been issued, said Hao. Because the chips are relatively cheap, Quanray won’t see an instant revenue bump, but “this model can be duplicated” beyond the China Mobile trials, Hao insisted.
“When it comes to the production technology, we still have a distance to go, especially when we compare ourselves with the leading UHF chip suppliers," he added.
Indeed, Impinj and Alien Technology, the top two UHF RFID chip startups in the U.S., have yet to pull off successful IPOs (they both scrapped their plans in recent years), the odds for success at a tiny RFID chip company based in Shanghai may be small. Still, Hao listed several factors working in his favor: Quanray’s ability to offer a complete RFID solution; lower cost structure (margins of less than 40 percent); and the company's knack for unique solutions like the patented RFID-integrated SIM card.
Current leading UHF RFID vendors like NXP, Impinj and Alien are far ahead of Quanray. If all three features mesh, concluded Hao, “We think we can catch up.”
Related stories:
Slideshow: New (Chinese) handsets you’ve never heard of
iPhone 5 draws praise, iPod gets camera
Yoshida in China: What is the Chinese Dream?
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goafrit
9/12/2012 3:34 PM EDT
This is surely a better strategy. It makes NFC integration as well as ensure compatibiity.
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junko.yoshida
9/12/2012 9:24 PM EDT
I totally agree with you, goafrit. It's a much more practical NFC approach, and it's easier to maintain compatibility as it offers tag-based only communication.
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sdfs
9/12/2012 10:38 PM EDT
RF-SIM wont work with the iphone as there is no microsim design. Also CMCC SH has stopped the RF-SIM service, according to 10086.
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junko.yoshida
9/12/2012 11:08 PM EDT
Obviously, I am not suggesting RF-SIM to be used for iPhone. I am just saying it could have been an option for operators outside China, but they chose not to. In a country like China where phones are typicaly not offered by operators as a bundled service, RF-SIM is a reasonable solution.
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ip2design
9/13/2012 3:12 AM EDT
Technically that may be OK but how about standardization ? Major Smartcard companies have focused on ISO14443 standard with 13.56MHz carrier wave. Moving to 2.4GHz may be a big issue.
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junko.yoshida
9/13/2012 9:40 AM EDT
No, Quanray is using 13.56 MHz, instead of 2.4GHz.
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Bert22306
9/13/2012 4:24 PM EDT
I'm always in favor of the smarter way of doing things, but unfortunately "smarter" depends on whether you're the consumer or the manufacturer.
Apple, as well as the wireless operators in the US which decide what hardware their customers can use, are certainly happier to mandate new hardware for the NFC bill-paying function. Much easier to get customers to shell out for the new hardware that way. Why give them the easy out of a chep update to their existing phones?
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SecurityGeek
9/20/2012 1:02 PM EDT
“Currently, our users are placing the bridge at the reader side [just like a sticker], so that a mobile user can simply replace his SIM card,” he added.
Um, if it only supports tag emulation mode, and it has to be placed on the reaader side like a sticker, then why not just buy a 13.56Mhz ISO14443 tag sticker?
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