For many years, the radio frequency identification (RFID) business has been expected to break out, with thoughts that tags could appear on virtually every product. While those overly optimistic expectations have never been met, there is no denying that the RFID business is a success story.

Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx, a leading research firm, estimated the RFID market at nearly $10 billion and growing. “It is growing very robustly, and there is a good degree of deserved confidence and excitement,” Das noted. “In 2014, the entire RFID market is $9.45 billion, rising to $10.1 billion in 2015.”

RAIN is the term for passive UHF tags, the leading type of RFID system. Steve Halliday, president, RAIN RFID, the industry’s association, noted that Chainlink Research has estimated that approximately 6.5 billion UHF RFID chips will be sold in 2015, and believes that retail RFID tag consumption should grow at approximately 34% over the next three years.

In addition, Chainlink Research reports that the industry as a whole will exceed 10 billion UHF chips annually within two years, and will ship just under 100 billion chips cumulatively from 2011-2020. 

“Prior to 2015, we estimate that 15 billion tags have been produced and sold into applications that need identification of items,” Halliday added. “One manufacturer has recently celebrated selling their 10 billionth RAIN tag.”

Leading RFID players are seeing this growth first-hand.

“Right now, the climate for RFID is incredibly positive,” said Francisco Melo, VP, global RFID, Avery Dennison. “Today most major retailers are either deploying or testing the technology, and the conversation has shifted from ‘if’ to ‘when’ and ‘how’ when it comes to adoption given the business case and ROI associated with RFID adoption. In fact, over 50% of leading apparel retailers globally are assessing, testing or adopting RFID primarily due to the proven business case and success exhibited by early adopters.”

Michael Fein, RFID senior product manager, Zebra Technologies, said that RFID is “absolutely” growing. Fein pointed to numerous success stories for Zebra Technologies’ customers, from maintaining inventory on the sales floor at Lord & Taylor to developing ready-to-read tags and handheld readers for Vail Resorts skiers and on-field player-tracking systems for the National Football League.

“Zebra offers several types of RFID technology that each have unique capabilities to deliver enterprise asset intelligence and is seeing growth in all of them,” Fein noted. “Real-Time Location Solutions (RTLS) are growing in a diverse set of applications, tracking and locating everything from vehicles on automotive assembly lines to NFL football players. NFC transaction solutions are rapidly growing in ticketing, payment and consumer engagement applications.

“Passive UHF or RAIN RFID technology uses low cost, long-range, RFID tags – increasingly with printed conductive antennas – to identify, locate and authenticate items,” Fein added. “This could be anything from a pair of shoes in a retail store, a part in the manufacturing process or even a legal marijuana plant in Colorado.”

Neil Mitchell, director of marketing for Alien Technology, said that Alien has seen some rapid increases in the market during the past two years.

“Alien Technology is focused on the retail market, particularly apparel. We are seeing a pickup in all market segments, particularly in inlays and chips,” Mitchell noted, adding that Alien Technology ships between 500 million and a billion tags and chips annually. “We are seeing a CAGR of 20% to 25%. One estimate for the RFID market in 2014 is four billion units, growing to 5.25 billion units overall in 2015, with 50% driven by retail. By contrast, the industry reached a billion chips annually in 2010.”

Kaz Lawler, CTO for PakSense, noted that while PakSense’s products are not typical RFID products, the company uses radio frequency to communicate identification information and environmental data.

“PakSense continues to be successful helping our customers with our UltraWireless RF Labels and AutoSense systems,” said Lawler. “Using AutoSense, our customers can easily track, log and report the temperature conditions of product throughout their supply chain. We are always looking for ways to integrate technology to make our users’ tasks easier and supply chain more effective.”

In particular, the retail market has been a strong area for RFID, with apparel one product that lends itself well to RFID tagging.
“In terms of numbers of tags, there has been strong growth in using passive UHF RFID for apparel,” said Das. “This is being rolled out by many clothing retailers, and in 2015, 3.8 billion tags will be used for apparel alone.”

“The apparel industry is the main driver for RFID at retail,” said Melo. “Apparel retailers are using RFID to improve their inventory accuracy to as high as 99%, resulting in increased sales as a result of improved availability while enabling true omni-channel retail and improved overall customer experience. At Avery Dennison, we have also developed specific inlays that allow retailers to RFID enable non-apparel categories including jewelry, shoes, cosmetics and even food.”

Mitchell said that retail is the largest market for RFID.

“The number one market is retail by far, led by consumer packaged goods (CPGs) and apparel,” Mitchell said. “Mobile asset tracking is the second largest market, in which goods can be tracked in vehicles both to stores as well as reverse logistics, picking up these goods for returns.”

“Specific to UHF passive or RAIN RFID technology, we’ve seen the most growth in item-level tracking applications,” Fein said. “Retail has been leading the way, and many retailers already use RFID today to inventory apparel items in-store. This allows them to keep shelves stocked and match inventory to demand – ultimately improving the customer experience. While retail inventory applications are leading the way, we see manufacturing and healthcare use cases rapidly gaining traction as well.”

Mitchell also sees opportunities in the field of automatic vehicle identification (AVI). “AVI is a new opportunity, as systems move from active to passive RFID, which is less expensive and more reliable,” Mitchell added.

Flexible and Printed Electronics and RFID

For flexible and printed electronics manufacturers, RFID has been an area where there are opportunities, as RFID leaders utilize printing in their processes.

“We create RFID antennas mostly through etching on PET, but printing does play a role,” said Mitchell. “Certain markets make a lot of sense for printing. Etching provides much finer lines and spacing.”

“Today I think the nearest opportunity is with printed antennas, as well as printed sensors or indicators that interface to a silicon chip,” Fein said. “Moisture, temperature, humidity, chemical presence, light, visual displays, etc. are all needed to enable RFID IoT applications. Making these features printed vs. traditional approaches is absolutely necessary to keep the tag small, thin, and low cost.”

“Flexible and printed electronics play a role and has a place in the growth and expanded use of RFID,” Lawler said. “Thinfilm’s OpenSense is a wonderful example of how printed electronics is contributing to the expanded use and application of RFID, particularly beyond traditional track-and-trace applications. This flexibility and the mass production possibilities opens the doors to yet to be seen applications of RFID technology.”