Pumping Up the RFID Tag Volume

2010 turned out to be a tremendous year for RFID, with success stories coming from nearly every facet of the industry, but the underlying theme and a primary indicator of success for many of these stories is the increase in tag volume.  More tags typically means that the solution is scaling and/or expanding, the enterprise is increasingly leveraging the system and the level of commitment to the technology is rising.  

Tag volumes are expected to exceed 3.7 Billion units in 2010, a jump of more than 35% over 2009, and are anticipated to approach 12.5 Billion by the end of 2014.  Most of this growth is coming from the HF and EPC UHF markets.  These two markets accounted for approximately 78% of the total global tag volume in 2009 and are predicted to represent more than 90% of global volume by 2014.  That means that more than 30 Billion HF and EPC UHF tags will be shipped from over the next 4 years.

What applications are driving this growth?  The following table provides a few highlights of transponder volumes by leading RFID applications.

APPLICATION	HF		EPC UHF
	2009 (Millions of Units)	CAGR (2009-2014)	2009 (Millions of Units)	CAGR (2009-2014)
Animal Tracking	25.9	45.1%	0.6	121.8%
Asset Tracking	37.2	21.7%	34.6	70.2%
AVI/Toll Collection	19.4	18.3%	16.0	64.4%
Baggage Handling	N/A	N/A	104.6	36.9%
Contactless Payment	55.4	38.1%	N/A	N/A
Customer Loyalty	1.7	45.2%	N/A	N/A
Document Tracking	21.3	32.2%	3.1	90.4%
ID/e-Government	270.7	16.2%	N/A	N/A
Library	105.7	20.1%	0.1	207.9%
Rental Item Tracking	36.4	31.0%	14.5	75.3%
RTLS/LBS	23.6	17.7%	9.0	77.2%
Security/Access Control	716.3	14.5%	N/A	N/A
Sensing/Monitoring	1.6	31.2%	1.9	125.1%
Shop-floor Automation	25.9	24.6%	14.8	80.4%
Supply Chain	105.0	15.1%	276.8	73.0%
Ticketing	301.8	24.9%	1.0	82.6%
WIP	30.2	23.3%	7.9	94.1%
Other	64.6	42.2%	17.7	116.1%

So to sum it up in 1 phrase, I’d say that RFID tag volumes for HF and EPC applications appear to be cranked up to 11!