RFID

With the launch of an RFID Investment Summit to be held in Boston on Feb 20, Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx looks at the recent investor interest in RFID and particularly active RFID and Real Time Locating Systems.

Over 200 people attended the second annual IDTechEx Active RFID Summit in Atlanta, Georgia in November. There were many positive remarks about the event and delegates expressed particular interest in Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) this year.

Despite some areas under performing, most of the RFID business is booming. Here IDTechEx has interviewed key companies in different vertical sectors. We present their comments on the opportunity for RFID in those sectors.

From inception to creating - all you need to know about manufacturing low cost high performance RFID

Where are the RFID success stories and in which market sectors? Here Teresa Henry highlights the leading adopter nations, the big spenders and surprise niches for RFID implementation.

Has the pallet/case market for RFID tags and other hardware become the nearest thing to a black hole in the RFID universe in 2006, thanks to reluctant mandated customers, technical problems and pricing for volumes that never came?

RFID technology is moving on apace in some areas. Certainly EPC Gen2 tags have demonstrated spectacular performance improvements when tagging cases and pallets. However work is still needed.

At IDTechEx, when we teach Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), we talk of it being a ubiquitous enabling technology like the wheel or paper. After all, RFID is now used from Bulgaria to Namibia, from Azerbaijan to Vietnam and Antarctica. There are well over 10,000 RFID projects out there and there are over 1000 suppliers that have now landed substantial orders for the specialist RFID hardware and services involved. Yet things have barely started.

With the ability to track, locate and sense, Active RFID is being rapidly adopted around the World, often creating new markets. Many adopters have reported a rapid return on investment (ROI) of 12 to 18 months which is leading to active RFID being a $6.78 billion market in 2016. Here Dan Lawrence summarizes the topic for the forthcoming IDTechEx Active RFID Summit event.

The IDTechEx RFID Smart Labels Europe Conference and Exhibition on September 19-20 broke new ground, showing how the subject has moved on. Here are some highlights of the event.