- The milestone represents nearly 10 percent of the RAIN RFID industry’s total 2024 shipments
- Impinj partners will be showcase leading-edge solutions based on their M800 series and Gen2X at RFID Journal Live
Impinj’s M800 series tag chip shipment volume surpassed five billion units earlier this year, becoming the company’s fastest-growing tag chip ever.
The milestone, which represents nearly 10 percent of the RAIN RFID industry’s total 2024 shipments, highlights enterprise adoption of the M800 series to solve operational challenges by gaining real-time visibility of their assets and goods across their global operations, according to company officials.
The milestone was announced just ahead RFID Journal Live where Impinj partners will showcase leading-edge solutions based the M800 series and Gen2X. Partners showcasing labels and inlays include Checkpoint, Hana, and Tageos; Gen2X-enabled readers partners include Urovo, RoyalRay, SLS, Chainway, Seuic, and Silion.
Enthusiasm for M800
Gahan Richardson, executive vice president and general manager, Impinj Business Unit, noted the company is pleased to see the enthusiasm for the M800 series from the industry, and the innovative range of products they’re producing.
“It’s already clear that our partners are leveraging the enhanced performance and manufacturability of these chips to develop small, high-performance inlays that help enterprises connect more items and increase their operational efficiency,” said Richardson in a statement.
Wide Industry Adoption
The M800 series is touted as delivering exceptional readability even in large tag populations, on densely packed items, and on traditionally hard-to-read items such as those containing liquids and metals. The M800 series includes support for Gen2X, an enhancement to the RAIN radio standard that speeds inventory, increases tag read range, declutters the environment, protects consumers, inhibits label and item counterfeiting, and reduces solution cost.
Impinj partners have launched more than 85 inlays using M800 series tag chips. Inlays are the combined chip and antenna that are attached to or embedded in items to provide item connectivity.
Among these inlays, using either the Impinj M830 or M850 tag chips, more than 40 have been quality tested and certified by Auburn University’s ARC program. These inlays are applied by enterprises to retail apparel, footwear, home goods, grocery, and other general merchandise.
Investment Fuels Growth
To support partners in their adoption, Impinj made investments in manufacturability and industrialization, quality assurance, and continuous improvement, as well as ensuring tagged items meet the rigorous quality standards enterprises require.
In 2023, Impinj opened a 29,000-square-foot facility to support RAIN tag chip development and industrialization, inlay design and assembly, and solutions prototyping and testing. That facility includes tag chip bonders, inlay test machines, Voyantic test systems, anechoic chambers, and much more. Impinj has built and tested millions of inlays using M800 series tag chips to ensure quality and reliability.
RAIN-enabled Visibility
Impinj solution partners, having seen the increased system performance made possible by the industry-leading M800 series tag chips, are launching solutions and devices with support for Gen2X to solve previously unsolvable enterprise use cases, reduce solution cost, or both.
Urovo CTO Bo Zhang noted in their handheld inventory testing with the their DT50P supported by Gen2X, they have seen up to 40 percent improvement in reading ability and 70 percent increase in inventory speed with Impinj M800 series tag chips.
“The exceptional readability is enabling new use cases like tagging of cosmetics and groceries, while the increase in inventory speed is creating operational efficiencies for our customers by reducing the time required to inventory a store or warehouse,” said Zhang.