A new market research report covering RFID from 2005 to 2015, researched by IDTechEx, reveals some surprising new disruptions. Mimicking the barcodes market, where the market for barcode labels grew then declined, the value of the RFID market will similarly peak before the annual numbers of tags sold peak.

 

The report reveals fast growth in billion dollar, billion tag niches as response to tagging about 30 billion pallets and cases for military and retail mandates is slow due to a range of technical problems at previously little used UHF frequencies. This is however being resolved with 3.1 billion tags being used for pallets and cases in 2006. Item level tagging (especially by pharmaceuticals) and tagging of baggage, animals, books, tickets and other non retail markets are strongly growing in value - in 2008 6.8 billion tags will be sold for such applications and 15.3 billion tags for pallets/cases, but the former tag value will be higher than that for pallets/cases.

 

The market for RFID interrogators is analyzed - reaching $1.14 billion in 2008 for EPC interrogators and $0.75 billion in the same year for other interrogators, such as Near Field Communication interrogators.

 

Forecasts by territorial region show that by 2010, 48% of RFID tags by numbers will be sold in East Asia, followed by 32% to North America.

 

This report also includes forecasts of chipless RFID tags (tags which contain no silicon chip), tags in the form of smart tickets or cards and semi passive and active tags.

 

Ten year forecasts are analysed in over 100 tables and figures, with detailed explanations of trends and disruptions and year by year roadmaps. RFID markets are analysed in many different ways, including projections for label versus non label, EPC versus non- EPC, active versus passive, chip versus chipless, markets by geographical region, application, tag format, tag location and tag, reader and software value. The emergence of new products, legal and demand pressures and impediments for the years to come are covered.

 

For further information, see the new IDTechEx market research publication RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2005-2015, published in February 2005.