The Bad News Bears
Media coverage of RFID technologies has turned decidedly negative, but do the news stories reflect the reality of the current situation?
In the January 2004 print issue of RFID Journal, we forecast that there would be plenty of negative news reports about RFID technology this year (see “The Ugly Year Ahead”). Expectations had been raised high in 2003 by overly optimistic news articles, and the media loves nothing more than pumping up a straw man only to knock it
down. True to form, the press reports began turning negative around the end of the first quarter.
Here is a sampling of the headlines that appeared in online publications in the last week of April and the first week of May:
“Standards Spat Threatens RFID Rollout” (CRM Daily)
“RFID: Too Few Experts, Too Dear and Tech Not Good Enough” (Silicon.com)
“RFID Far From Critical Mass” (VNUNet.com)
“RFID Redux: Don’t Toss the Bar-Code Reader Yet” (ADT Magazine)
“RFID a Simple Solution With Complex Problems” (Computerworld)
“RFID Not Ready for Primetime” (SearchSecurity.com)
Just as the thrust of most news stories last year was that RFID is “the next big thing,” the focus has shifted to “RFID is overhyped.” But few stories provide the much-needed insight into why the technology is being adopted, or whether the obstacles to adoption can be overcome.
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Here is a sampling of the headlines that appeared in online publications in the last week of April and the first week of May:
“Standards Spat Threatens RFID Rollout” (CRM Daily)
“RFID: Too Few Experts, Too Dear and Tech Not Good Enough” (Silicon.com)
“RFID Far From Critical Mass” (VNUNet.com)
“RFID Redux: Don’t Toss the Bar-Code Reader Yet” (ADT Magazine)
“RFID a Simple Solution With Complex Problems” (Computerworld)
“RFID Not Ready for Primetime” (SearchSecurity.com)
Just as the thrust of most news stories last year was that RFID is “the next big thing,” the focus has shifted to “RFID is overhyped.” But few stories provide the much-needed insight into why the technology is being adopted, or whether the obstacles to adoption can be overcome.
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