Hot Technologies: RFID: Opportunities Outside

While the initial adoption was driven by mandates, whether

Walmart or FDA or DoD mandates, the adopters now are beginning to go for wider

deployments based on business requirements and addressing the pain areas.

Additionally, the hype around RFID is on the wane, bringing more realistic

expectations with focus on developing wider applications.

Whos Keen?



Among the verticals that have evinced interest in RFID are manufacturing,
transport and logistics, retail, pharma, hospitals, etc. Asset tracking is

expected to emerge as the leading RFID application in the Indian market.

Besides, security and access control remains one of the mainstream applications.

The initial applications in the retail segment are building up

around asset tracking, supply chain automation (shipping and receiving

automation), inventory management, out of stock management, fresh item

management of perishables, and promotion execution.

Market Predictions



Research firm IDTechEx predicts the RFID market value to touch $27.88 bn in
2017. According to the firms 2007 update on its annual 10 year forecast on

the RFID market, the total RFID market value (including all hardware, systems,

integration, etc) across all countries will be $4.96 bn. The largest piece of

the market will be RFID cards, contributing $2.99 bn. The remaining $1.97 bn

will come from non-card RFID (eg RFID labels, fobs, tickets, etc). It further

predicts 1.71 bn tags will be sold in 2007 with case- and pallet-tagging, driven

largely by US mandates, contributing 420 mn units.

In adoption of RFID technology, the Indian market is still in

the pilot stage, and trailing behind North American and European counterparts.

However, the year 2007 will witness growth in RFID adoption.

Towards Standardization



A lot of innovations and significant developments in RFID have been
happening in the area of improving reader/tag performance. A significant

development in this area has been the formulation of the EPCglobal Inc-ratified,

Class-1 Gen-2 standards. Perceptions of high capital costs, low read rates, and

uncertainty around standards had been some of the factors dampening the

technologys adoption in the country. However, with Gen-2 having become widely

available, many low read rate issues have gone away, and the uncertainty around

standards has also been resolved to a large extent.

The most significant impact of the Gen-2 standards has been on

the cost of RFID hardware. Other benefits include faster, improved and more

flexible read and write speed, higher reliability in tag counting, more robust

performance of many readers in close proximity, enhanced security and

extensibility to higher-function tags and systems. The emphasis has also moved

from the physics of RFID to the RFID-enabled applications.

Among the other technology trends shaping up the RFID market

are; integrated small form factor RFID reader, high memory capacity RFID tag,

interfacing UHF reader in POS, and handheld terminal. Small foot printer UHF

RFID reader with Zigbee wireless interconnectivity is the latest innovation.

Shipra Malhotra



shipram@cybermedia.co.in