RFID Market Forecasts 2009-2019

April 22, 2009

multipage

Industry, however, usually seeks rapid ROI. RFID is being applied where it can demonstrate a fairly rapid return on investment—such as apparel tracking, manufacturing, asset tracking, book tagging, etc. Those intending to supply the highest volumes of tags for open markets have had to diversify into many closed loop applications. With some companies having limited funds at this time, some RFID projects will be delayed, but some companies will use this to their advantage and adopt RFID where the paybacks are compelling for competitive advantage and to increase sales. However, it is still very rare for any one customer to buy more than 5 million RFID labels in any one implementation.

RFID progress in 2008—by value
By value IDTechEx find that $2.23 billion was spent on tags alone in 2008, an average of price of $1.13 per tag. With the launch of printed RFID later this year for transit ticketing and other applications, and the increased use of RFID labels rather than cards, that average will fall to $0.22 in 2014.

IDTechEx has seen increasing RFID manufacture capacity being installed in East Asia over the last 12 months. In particular, after delivery of almost one billion RFID cards at HF, China now has a large HF tag manufacture capacity. Many companies in the West have formed alliances or joint ventures with companies in the East.

The leading frequency
The leading frequency in 2008 remained HF (13.56 MHz). In fact, HF RFID working at the ISO14443 specification was responsible for more than five times the expenditure on RFID to any other specification, with large new applications added such as passports and RFID enabled phones. Add supply chain, library and secure access RFID to the ISO15693 specification at HF and we see continued huge use of this frequency. The market for 18000-6 passive UHF tags resulted in a market size of $145 million for the tags alone.

Leading providers
The IDTechEx report also tracks over 200 RFID companies and provides estimates of the revenues of the leading companies. We find that the largest RFID companies or company divisions that are profitable are still those predominately in HF, active RFID, or systems integration. The biggest and most successful vertically aligned companies (i.e. solution providers) are focussed on no more than two industry segments (such as secure access and ID from Assa Abloy; military and heavy logistics from Lockheed Martin/Savi and animal tagging from AllFlex).

Unrivalled market insight
This 268 page report includes a separate functional spreadsheet of the forecasts and up to one hour of free consulting time with an IDTechEx consultant. Globally researched by IDTechEx technical experts, we analyze the RFID market in many different ways, with over 170 tables and figures. They include detailed ten year projections for active vs. passive, readers, markets by frequency, markets by geographical region, label vs. non-label, chip vs. chipless, markets by application, EPC vs non-EPC, high value niche markets, tag format and tag location. Cumulative sales of RFID are analyzed as are the major players and unmet opportunities. It covers the emergence of new products, legal and demand pressures and impediments for the years to come. For more information see www.IDTechEx.com/forecasts.

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