The Booming RFID Business in 2010
Toughest market
The toughest market for passive RFID has been UHF labels for consumer goods suppliers to put on pallet loads and cases at the behest of the retailers but this business has largely collapsed because of technical and payback problems. Indeed, with RFID suppliers and consumer goods companies taking hundreds of millions of dollars of losses on this work over the last five years it has seemed more like a death wish than a market. There never was a prospect of payback for the CPG companies because having a silicon chip in the tags ensured that they could never drop to the necessary one cent or less in price. However, printed RFID tags with no silicon chip are now appearing in passive RFID tags initially in the form of contactless smart tickets.
Where the chip is needed in a UHF passive tag, price rises of around 10% have been accepted recently, partly because item level taggingis booming, notably of apparel for both civil and military purposes. These UHF labels have little water or metal to contend with, that upsets the signal, and the relatively high value of apparel means that paybacks are easily obtained.
