RFID is Poised for Change

Some suppliers read the market correctly and prosper

When we look at the money spent, RFID is not a UHF business, though UHF is making inroads. In standards, it is not an EPCglobal business, though EPCglobal is making inroads. RFID is a business of tagging financial, access, identification and transport cards and tickets and tagging passports, library books and other things at HF, whether we look at the expenditure on tags or on systems. It is also a booming business in tagging pets and livestock with LF tags, but LF for beer kegs, gas cylinders, roll cages, trolleys and secure access is conceding ground to HF and, to a lesser extent, UHF. There are many companies primarily in HF that have more than $100 million in profitable, growing sales including NXP, ACS, Huahong and the RFID part of Gemplus. NXP and Motorola foresaw that the Chinese market for RFID would become one of the largest - indeed, this year it is temporarily the world’s largest market for RFID. These two companies, and a few others, have already established substantial sales in China.