In fact, identity/payment cards, animal tags and passports are now 80% of the RFID market by value and these application areas are simply booming. The commanding positions in these sectors are held by companies such as Assa Abloy (number one in RFID, mainly dealing in secure access and ID cards), Gemalto (the leader in passports, the third-largest sector), ERG (mainly concerned with transportation and cash-replacement cards), and Savi Technology (which specialises in military and heavy logistics). All of the companies mentioned have $100 to 300 million in RFID sales. Allflex (which is the top dog in animal RFID) is rapidly approaching the $100-million mark. In other words, the long-held belief that there isn't any money in this sector no longer applies.Three years ago the Chinese were scarcely in the RFID business at all; yet this year China is likely to represent the largest market in the world for both RFID tags and their accompanying systems, as deliveries of their national identification card peak.
Don't believe the hype
So what of the future? In 2017, the sectors mentioned above will still be among the largest by value of tags sold, with their market value likely to have risen fivefold, but other sectors will be starting to rival them by then in terms of current sales. IDTechEx predicts that pallet and case tagging will start to generate greater revenue at an appropriate time, and there should be one or two profitable suppliers after the changes that are currently taking place in the industry. However, RFID tags for consumer goods will be a $2.1 billion business, rivalling cards for the top slot by 2017 and well ahead of the value of the pallet market. Military RFID tags will hit $1 billion, with the associated systems reaching a much larger figure.Nevertheless, the widespread tagging of consumer goods at item level will only be achieved by tag prices at 0.1 to 2 cents: this means printing the tag directly onto articles, like 85% of barcodes today. Companies such as Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi, Konica Minolta, Pioneer, Asahi Kasei, Samsung, Organic ID, Somark and Vytec are developing ways of achieving this with the leading suppliers of electronics inks such as Nissan Chemical, Sumitomo, Merck and Dai Nippon in close support. All of these companies see printed RFID as a small part of an enormous opportunity in printed electronics in general. It is therefore likely that certain players in RFID will fade from sight if they do not participate in these bigger sectors. Other companies, some of them very large and strategic, will take over much of the action. Which ones? It is still too early to tell.
