Asiana IDT's slogan is "Making U-Life Better." In an effort to realize this slogan, Asiana IDT recently completed the construction of its R&D Center in Song-do. With this new expansion, Asiana IDT will step forward to develop new ubiquitous technology and expand its R&D field. Asiana IDT has top specialists not only in its specified field, RFID/USN and u-City, but also in every other IT business area. In addition, it has employed and cultivated distinguished minds with diverse areas of expertise. With these great resources, Asiana IDT has reached an annual growth rate of 34% for the last 5 years.

Also, it has built Enterprise Resource Plannings (ERPs), unified its IT sources, and fostered its partner companies with mutually beneficial policies. Asiana IDT is growing into a competitive global enterprise with its local subsidiary in China, Kum-ho Yun-gun Ltd. Also, to maintain its competitiveness in the R&D field, Asiana IDT has established a quality management system and an RFID/USN institute to concentrate on the development of new technology. In an exclusive interview with Korea IT Times, President Kim said: "Recently, we developed a new RFID reader, the AIR-R1100 series. As use of RFID readers diversifies, they need to be applied with specialized technologies according to the job. By doing so, it will display the effect caused by the investment of customers.

Especially for metallic equipment and automated work fields, sensors should be connected with the signal processing and should be able to cope with reader-crowded conditions where there is a lot of interference. Our new AIR-R1100 series is perfectly equipped with all these good features. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that we applied this product to the manufacturing process of all the plants of Kum-ho Tire, our affiliate." The metal tag of AIRR1100 attached to the metallic equipment is a high quality product of its own. It is optimized based on the reader and recognized perfectly at all times. In addition, with U-link, the middleware designed and produced by Asiana IDT, the tag is perfectly connected with the system in the field. Accordingly, it drastically increases productivity.

Behind this excellent technology, Asiana IDT is trying to advance to the production line and product management of domestic heavy industries. President Kim says, "The technology that traces and guides air baggage with UHF (Ultra High Frequency) RFID is the best in Korea. Korea's technology in that field is leading the world. Surprisingly, Star Alliance, the union of the world's top airlines, is benchmarking Gimpo airport." Kim adds, "Even though the price of RFID inlays is gradually going down, the price is falling in inverse proportion to the amount of production. Therefore, the stabilization point of the RFID tag price will be when domestic airlines choose an RFID baggage management system or the world's airlines unite and use the tag system."

Then, are there any dark sides to our RFID business President Kim points out some hardships of the RFID business in Korea. The domestic market for RFID systems is still growing and demands for the tags are limited for now. However, these days, government-driven businesses like innovative IT networks are on the increase, and enterprises respond affirmatively to the Return of Investment (ROI) of RFID by stages. Therefore, the RFID business should be equipped with technology and solutions to advance to both domestic and foreign markets through continuous building and technological developments.