Item Level RFID – Prosperous Market 2006-2016

Change in Technology
The technology will change. Today we have most item level tagging being HF, with smaller but significant amounts of Far Field UHF and some 2.45GHz and LF (125-135KHz) tags. Within five years Near Field UHF will become popular and in ten years a significant amount of item level RFID will be done without a silicon chip, sometimes by direct printing. The average price of just under one cent for an item level tag in 2016 will cover a range from 0.1 cent primitive ink stripes and thin film transistor circuits to $8 tags for aircraft parts to high specification and even more expensive military tags. Some tags for dangerous, expensive or mission critical items will have batteries and sensors in them and even act as Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) on assets in hospitals, museums, art galleries etc not just in supply chains.