RFID

As forecasted by IDTechEx, there has been a surge in orders for RFID in 2009. Despite the world's largest RFID project, the $6 billion China National ID card scheme, being completed a year earlier, the global RFID market is rising 5% this year to $5.56 billion, in the face of the global financial meltdown which has caused some car production, for example, to plummet by 50%. In many applicational sectors, RFID orders are up 10%.

In these days of environmental consciousness, what are RFID's green credentials? Is RFID a net positive or negative contributor to the campaign to help the planet?

IDTechEx announces the new report RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2009-2019, which addresses the global RFID situation. Areas of growth, undersupply and oversupply and trends are given based on extensive new primary research. The report provides an unprecedented level of forecasts split in many ways. Here the primary author, Raghu Das, gives a summary of the report findings.

Numerous apparel companies have reported increased sales of up to 20% using RFID to monitor shelf stock levels. It is now emerging as the first major application of RFID in retail, with a strong business case. In 2008, IDTechEx research finds that 38% of the money spent on RFID in retail is specifically for apparel tagging. Here Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of research firm IDTechEx, summarises the findings from the new IDTechEx report RFID in Apparel 2008-2018.

One million transistors is not enough for the RFID chip in the new e-passports because, increasingly, they have to double as driver's licenses, multipurpose cards and other media.

Last year, about $2.5 billion was spent on tags and systems at HF (13.56MHz), ten times the amount on RFID at any other frequency and representing 50% of the global RFID market. Now IDTechEx tracks a rush of technology innovation and new market opportunities.

This article shares some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report "Energy Harvesting and Storage for Electronic Devices 2009-2019".

Third Generation Active RFID is the Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) sometimes known as the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and characterized by the tag doubling as a reader and a so-called mesh network being used with a choice of sensors on each tag.

The US and China vie for the title of the world's largest RFID market, this year seeing them level pegging with $1.3 billion of business, which is looking to quintuple in the next ten years.