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RFID growth potential remains strong despite current apparel rollout slowdown

7/27/2011

Despite the 2008-2009 economic setbacks, the RFID market rebounded nicely in 2010, growing slightly more than 14% to reach roughly USD 5.3 billion. When automobile immobilization hardware is extracted from the total, the market grew close to 18%, capturing nearly USD 4.4 billion.

ABI Research's ongoing research and data collection efforts reveal a projected total market size of nearly USD 6 billion in 2011, reflecting slightly more than 11% growth. The 2011 forecast without automobile immobilization is USD 5 billion, growing in excess of 14% over 2010.

ABI Research foresees variation in demand and the pace of adoption between applications, verticals, regions and technologies, with the retail apparel sector in particular displaying something of a slowdown in growth this year. However the bottom line is that across the market as a whole we continue to see strong potential for future growth.

Research director Michael Liard notes, "The fastest-growing application between now and 2016 will be item-level tracking in supply-chain management, which ABI Research estimates will exceed a 37% growth rate."

This growth is being driven by high-volume demand for passive UHF systems to support...

Retail apparel tagging in US, Europe and other select country markets

Pharmaceutical tagging in Korea due to government compliance

Wine, tobacco and other anti-counterfeiting tagging efforts, notably in China

Other items over long term, including cosmetics, consumer electronics and more

"The fastest-growing verticals over our five-year forecast period (in descending order) will be retail CPG, retail in-store, healthcare and life sciences, diverse non-CPG manufacturing, and commercial services," says Liard.

More specifically, primary RFID applications can be broken down into "traditional" and "modernizing" types. In the former group are access control, animal ID, automotive immobilization, AVI and e-ID documents. The modernizing category includes asset management, baggage handling, cargo tracking and security, point-of-sale contactless payment, real-time location, supply chain management, and ticketing. The 2011-2016 CAGR for aggregated modernizing applications is expected to be double that of the traditional applications cluster. Julien Happich

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