June 4th, 2008
VeriChip going away?
Just as it was launching its consumer campaign VeriChip seems to be going away.
The company launched its ad campaign under the name HealthLink in April, but just three weeks later sold its Canadian unit, Xmark, to Stanley Works for $45 million and put itself on the block.
An executive told RFID Update simply it couldn’t stand the “cash burn” of consumer marketing. This just three weeks after launching its program. The Xmark deal enabled the company to get out from under its bills.
CEO Scott Silverman was then bounced and replaced by Joseph J. Grillo, who runs another RFID company in the same town, Digital Angel. That company lost $4.8 million on sales of $22.4 million in its most recent quarter.
While VeriChip released a study just yesterday claiming its technology saved emergency care patients $685.67 per day, it has been dogged by critics like CASPIAN, which yesterday released a new report linking the chips with cancerous tumors.
The chips only contained 16-digit identification numbers, but from here both they, and the company endorsing them, look to be on the way to the dustbin. That famous picture above, showing the chip next to a penny, may soon represent its stock price.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 06/05/08
