Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas to Distribute Identive Group’s RFID and Near Field Communications Products

Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas, a business region of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), has signed a distribution agreement with Identive Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: INVE; Frankfurt: INV), a leading provider of RFID and Near Field Communications (NFC) solutions. The agreement provides Avnet's customers with access to Identive’s broad range of RFID and NFC readers and embedded modules, in addition to an extensive array of RFID/NFC passive transponders and tags. Identive’s RFID and NFC products enable a wide range of contactless applications including access, payment, ticketing and asset tracking.

“Avnet offers a large, experienced sales team focused on Near Field Communications and RFID,” said Louis Modell, vice president of sales and general manager of the Americas for Identive’s ID Products division. “This agreement allows us to leverage Avnet’s sales and technical support resources as an extension of our own and serve a wider customer base. It also provides Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas’ customers with easy access to Identive’s industry-leading NFC and RFID technology solutions to develop and deploy the contactless applications that most matter to their business.”

Adoption of mobile phone-based point-of-sale, ticketing, security and loyalty systems based on Near Field Communications technology is accelerating while contactless technology is proliferating in new applications from closed loop embedded RFID based systems for video gaming platforms, to medical device tracking, to anti-counterfeiting, to field maintenance management and reverse logistics. Avnet and Identive are in a position to provide complete ecosystem solutions adapted to all applicable RFID standards to both industrial and consumer customers.

“Market research firm Deloitte projects that 300 million NFC-enabled cellphones, tablets and e-readers will be sold in 2013, and Identive is a pioneer in the advancement of complementary infrastructure-based solutions,” said Alex Iuorio, senior vice president, supplier development, Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas. “In addition, many of Identive's readers and modules are based on NXP Semiconductors’ popular NFC reader and Cortex processor family. Having Identive on our line card enables us to offer customers more integrated module options, along with a vertically integrated transponder offering — all of which is exactly the kind of technological synergy that Avnet can help bring to a customer’s development effort.”

Identive’s Offerings from Avnet

Identive’s NFC solutions development kit and Multi-ISO based platform provide highly integrated plug-and-play system solutions for all 13.56 MHz RFID applications: NFC, ISO14443A, ISO14443B and ISO15693. Identive’s popular range of mobile and desktop smart card readers as well as NFC readers are available. NFC/MIFARE plug & play, mobile and core module boards support NFC Tag Types 1, 2, 3 and 4 and offer fast, reliable and flexible connectivity for multiple use cases. HF and UHF RFID and NFC passive transponders and tags are available in a variety of form factors and with a wide range of contactless ICs from leading manufacturers to suit every customer’s project needs. Identive’s transponder and tag offering includes a large selection of smart tags and labels, patented tag on metal (tom®) RFID labels for use on metal surfaces such as phones or equipment, and transponders and tags for NFC and mobility applications.

To view the entire Identive product line available from Avnet, visit www.AvnetExpress.com. More information about Identive is available at www.identive-group.com.