I just read an interesting piece by IDTechEX on spending on RFID over the next 15 years, which it says, will peak then rapidly fall, replicating spending on - and the printing of - barcodes.
The article, Printed Electronics: the future of RFID argues RFID can replace the silicon chip, "with fully printed logic and memory circuits using cheap materials, enabling sub one cent tags. The silicon chip, with its huge manufacture and material cost and interconnect challenges will be relegated to tags requiring only the highest performance in terms of memory, speed of operation and sophistication."
Pie in the sky? Want more evidence? Read this other IDTechEX piece, which suggests that one of the most important announcements on RFID in 2007 was from a company called Kovio which prints transistors.
Technorati tags: IDTechEX Kovio printed electronics silicon chip
Comments (1)
The reason that passive RFID is not replacing barcodes is lack of performance, not cost. Passive RFID was promoted on the promise of full automation which depends on the ability to automatically read large groups of items, i.e. a palette load of items. In practice, group reading has failed to perform forcing users to resort to reading items one at a time with hand-held readers. This makes the two technologies equal in performance. There is no advantage to any large scale replacement of barcodes with passive RFID regardless of cost.
Posted by Chris Kapsambelis | February 10, 2008 3:22 PM
Posted on February 10, 2008 15:22