IDTechEx announces that its RFID Knowledgebase now exceeds 1000 case studies of RFID in action, covering activities of over 1250 companies in action. Chairman Dr Peter Harrop said, "RFID is now so ubiquitous that few participants know of all the activities in their chosen application, let alone the reasons behind their success or failure. As our database progresses rapidly to 2000 case studies, clients find it invaluable for answering a wide range of questions from "What is going on in my country?" and "What are the most popular frequencies for this application?" to "What has that supplier done before and was it successful?". We see new trends. For example, failures today are less likely to be due to lack of standards or equipment not working. It is more common to see the funding company say "The trial was successful, establishing a good payback, but funds are not available for a full rollout." Another common reason nowadays is failure to link to legacy systems, often because the difficulty is underestimated. We find that active RFID tags are far more popular than is commonly realised - we already have over 150 case studies on these and many are both large and lucrative. Surprisingly, most are not at long range but there are enduring reasons for their use.

 

We can temper the enthusiasm for UHF at item level with the fact that almost all such applications to date are at 13.56MHz and these users are usually well satisfied. However, item level tagging is arriving faster than most realise, with over 50 case studies recorded. UHF is used in an increasing number of the new ones as it is often favoured in retail trials and applications. The most activity in use of RFID turns out to be the US followed by the UK but we see Japan rapidly becoming number two and China and Korea moving up fast. Little of this is reported in the West. East Asian users often favour applications not yet seen in the West. We are very excited about the Knowledgebase because it can help everyone in the RFID value chain, academics and even legislators. Statistically meaningful analysis of trends is even becoming possible. For more see www.rfidbase.com.