Jan 27, 2006This article was originally published by RFID Update.
January 27, 2006—Research firm IDTechEx of Cambridge has released the 2006 version of its annual comprehensive report on the RFID market and its growth prospects over the next decade. Relative to other recently-released research, RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2006 - 2016 makes very optimistic predictions. Most notably, IDTechEx sees RFID being worth $2.71 billion in 2006. By contrast, Gartner, in its comprehensive market report released in December, doesn't predict such values until around 2010, when it pegs the RFID market at $3 billion. Such prediction discrepancies have been common in RFID for the last few years, which is an indication of just how young the market is.
Following are highlights from IDTechEx report:
- The RFID market's value will reach $2.71 billion in 2006.
- The number of tags sold will more than double to 1.3 billion from an estimated 600 million in 2005.
- About 500 million of those tags will be used for case and pallet tagging, with the balance spread across applications in baggage tracking, contactless payment, and e-passports.
- Closed-loop applications is currently a profitable RFID sweet spot, and will continue to be in the short term. Vendors will tailor their offerings with this in mind, seeking to position themselves as best-of-breed in tightly-defined verticals.
- Challenges being worked through today that currently impede more aggressive growth include tag yield versus cost, frequency acceptance, specification creep, and performance.
- These challenges will be overcome, and there will be a nearly ten-fold increase in the market size by 2016, when IDTechEx predicts that the total spent on RFID systems and services will surpass $26 billion.
- The real-time location systems market (RTLS) will contribute a sizable $6 billion to this total.
- The report identifies various niche markets whose smaller sizes will attract less competition and therefore represent less cut-throat but still highly profitable opportunities. They include: e-passports, livestock and food traceability, healthcare, and prisoner-tracking.
See the announcement from IDTechEx
