Global RFID market continues to grow

By Dr. Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx.

The global RFID business has grown about five fold in the last ten years and analyst IDTechEx has detailed reasons for seeing the market grow 4.2 times in value over the next ten years. However, many of the government initiatives that powered past growth are largely completed, such as e-passports and the Chinese National ID card, so where does that future growth come from?

The annual IDTechEx event RFID Europe in Cambridge UK 28-29 September gives the answers, with conference, exhibition, masterclasses and visits. For example, RFID adoption on apparel is growing at twice the rate of the RFID market as a whole, with nearly 100 organisations now fitting these tags. This is detailed in the new IDTechEx report, "Apparel RFID 2011-2021" and, in the conference, Gerry Weber of Germany, NP Collection of Finland, NXP of Austria and Avery Dennison give the latest.

Although apparel tagging is not an example of the government driven programmes that powered RFID in the past, animal tagging is such an example and this is moving into high gear in Europe with mandatory tagging of sheep and goats this year and cattle this year and other four legged livestock in two years from now. IDTechEx gives the detail on this at the event and the breadth of application on animals is illustrated by Michigan State University explaining its tracking of insects and Pharmaseq its tagging of laboratory animals.

Logistics is an application gaining market share and the event has user NYK Logistics and others explaining why. Cubic Corporation gives the latest on RFID in passenger transportation and Helsinki Metropolia University has a new view on people management. Another booming sector is Healthcare, so Savi, Guide Dogs for the Blind, SQS service, Max Pharma and CETEMMSA give the update here.

Of course many technologies apply over many sectors and Queralt therefore talks on Real Time Locating Systems, Sunchon National University in Korea on printed RFID, Optaglio of the Czech Republic on HoloRFID plus Telelegesis and UCC on Wireless Sensor Networks (third generation active RFID) . Users Air France and Copenhagen Airports report on RFID in aviation and Omni, Arnlea and INSIS of Argentina cover oil and gas and other applications. From Cypak of Sweden to EXAX of Korea, IDTechEx has found best-in-class-speakers with something to say that is both new and relevant to Europe. Once again, plenty of end users will be there including speakers BMW, Goodyear and Centre Pompidou in France, to ground the discussion in reality and make contact with suppliers.