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RFID INFORMATION
Zebra Technologies has recently bought several
impressive RFID companies, putting over $200 million on
the table; and with $500 million in the bank, it is
clearly poised to do more. In different RFID sectors,
Assa Abloy buys at least one RFID company every year.
Inside Contactless has just raised $38 million to boost
its effort on RFID enabled mobile phones with the
world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia,
leading the group of investors. Clearly RFID is taking
off — big time.
Leap forward in HF RFID
Consider High Frequency RFID. This is the main focus of
spending on the technology, with ISO 14443 tags and
systems responsible for about 10 times the order value
of any other contestant. It is not strongly promoted and
it is widely believed to be a mature technology with
little improvement ahead of it. Yet HF RFID is taking a
huge leap forward thanks to a string of technical
breakthroughs in 2007 and 2008 that sharply increase
range, multi-tag reading and tag cost and size. These
advances also promise lower cost tags and lower power
readers to the point where battery operated miniature
readers become commonplace. In each case up to a factor
of 10 improvement is seen — there is nothing incremental
about these advances. IDTechEx has encapsulated this in
a new report “HF RFID — the Great Leap Forward”.
Active RFID rapidly gains ground
Active RFID is a particularly hot sector of RFID, with
tenfold increase in sales in prospect over the next 10
years powered first by Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS)
on people and assets then Ubiquitous Sensor Systems
(USS) with some merging of the two in state of the art,
ultra low cost radio mesh networks. Locate and track
everyone and every asset in a hospital? Monitor forest
fires with a billion tags? Print RFID tags on paper?
This and much more is in prospect and many radically new
approaches make new markets feasible, including boosting
the batteries with photovoltaics that works off both
light and heat.
For example, Ultra Wide Band RTLS has an unmatched
combination of accuracy even in 3D, avoidance of
multipath and other interference, multi-tag reading at
very high speed and penetration of walls. If the current
growth of UWB RTLS continues, it will dominate the RTLS
market within a few years. However, as the RTLS market
reaches the billions of dollars level, there will be a
place for many other exciting new RTLS technologies just
about to hit the market and many giant corporations are
seeking to enter the business. As predicted, recent
additions to the IDTechEx RFID Knowledgebase of over
3,100 RFID projects in 101 countries involve an
increasing percentage of active RFID projects.
Incidentally, this is by far the world’s largest
searchable database on RFID in action. It automatically
generates graphs of such things as distribution of
frequency used, active versus passive, tag shapes
employed, and so on, by country.
Startling new innovations
RFID is at a very interesting stage, with huge
investment and huge innovation such as silicon chips
with the antenna on the chip yet long range. Surface
Acoustic Wave RFID has been newly installed in the
International Space Station because of its superlative
performance and safety. Several types of RFID without
the expensive silicon chip are about to hit the market,
some with one hundredth of the cost and the capability
of direct printing, avoiding the cost of applying a
label.
The conference that covers it all
The world’s leading conference on RFID smart labels,
active RFID, and their systems is called “RFID Smart
Labels USA,” and it takes place in Boston, February
20-21,
(www.IDTechEx.com/USA). All of these new advances
will be analyzed. A substantial exhibition, investment
forum, visits to best-in-class local RFID facilities and
optional Masterclasses will once again bring the subject
alive. Delegates will receive access to the RFID
Knowledgebase of over 3100 projects for a limited period
of time after the conference.
Little wonder that huge users and potential users will
be speaking about their progress and needs for the
future. They include LG, BP, Coca-Cola, Kimberly Clark,
Ford, Chep (the world’s number one in pallets),
International Post Corporation, the U.S. Army, the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration, Boeing and — for the
world’s airlines — IATA and SITA. Representatives from
these companies will present full lectures (and you can
meet them). This is not a matter of a brief appearance
in an unscripted panel discussion. Organizers IDTechEx
do things the traditional way with unmatched value for
money. Indeed, independent analysts such as Baird will
present in addition to analysts IDTechEx, so projections
can be compared.
Cards, China and Japan
With over 40% of the RFID business currently involving
cards, it is very relevant that the world number one in
cards and, for that matter RFID passports and some other
sectors, Gemalto, will present its latest advances.
China spent the most on RFID tags and systems in 2007,
mainly driven by cards, so Chinese technical experts
will explain what comes next because that surge has
given Chinese RFID manufacturers an edge that is little
appreciated in the West as yet.
Huge takeoff in RFID phones
Forty million people in Japan now have RFID enabled
phones and there is a pretty clear road map emerging to
when one billion or more people have them. These phones
will be to the Near Field Communication ISO global
standards and employ an active RFID reader in the phone
that can act as an active RFID tag when on and a passive
one when off.
IDTechEx has written the definitive report on this
program as a huge number of trails of many innovative
NFC benefits are mounted across the world and the
haggling about who keeps the profit comes to a close.
Many new NFC phones will shortly hit the market. The
IDTechEx report “RFID Mobile Phones and Contactless
Smart Cards 2008-2018” comes to the interesting
conclusion that both forms of RFID will prosper. Those
phones will emulate some payment and access cards but
will not significantly affect national ID cards and
other versions and even in finance, the payment methods
will coexist. RFID tags in buildings and many other
locations will be monitored by the phones enabling a
plethora of added value services to be lucratively
provided. The conference thoroughly explains this from
several viewpoints. All will be revealed from companies
such as LG, Motorola and Nokia — the biggest cell phone
manufacturers in the World.
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