This article was originally published by RFID Update.
June 12, 2008—International market research and events firm IDTechEx gave the RFID industry a mid-year checkup and pronounced it is healthy and on track for $5.3 billion in global sales in 2008, consistent with the previous forecast (see IDTechEx Releases RFID Market Predictions for 2008). A wave of large (more than $500 million) orders and continued strong growth in transportation ticketing are leading the industry growth, IDTechEx CEO Raghu Das told RFID Update.
“Substantial orders for RFID are being placed all around the world,” Das said. “This year we are starting to see many more large projects. They aren’t as big as some of the projects announced in other years, but they are more numerous.”
The new report from IDTechEx also affirmed the company’s earlier prediction that RFID will be a $27 billion industry in 2018.
No projects new in 2008 are as large as China’s Golden Card citizen ID card project, which generated more than $6 billion in RFID sales over several years, but new public transportation ticketing projects in many cities, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, are helping RFID sales exceed previous levels. The transportation ticketing sector, which IDTechEx predicts will account for $3 billion of the $5.3 billion spent on RFID worldwide, is generating most of the new large RFID orders, Das said.
“However, we expect other sectors will eventually dwarf the tag volumes of transportation ticketing,” Das said.
Apparel is not yet one of the highest-volume RFID markets, but it has been one of the fastest growing this year, according to Das.
“We’ve seen apparel grow very rapidly this year,” Das said. “We always expected apparel would be a leading segment of the retail industry for RFID, because of the fantastic results that Marks & Spencer previously announced. This year, we’re seeing a lot more companies, such as American Apparel, come out and talk about what they’re doing with RFID. (See Marks & Spencer to Expand RFID Item Tagging and American Apparel Going to Item-Level RFID in Stores for background on these apparel-industry users.) Earlier this year investment firm Robert W. Baird also noted growing adoption in the apparel industry (see Summary of Baird RFID Monthly for January).
IDTechEx also announced its RFID Europe 2008 conference will be held in Cambridge, UK, from September 30th to October 1st.