According to an analyst from AMR, the RFID industry has finally reached the now mythical 'tipping point'. And interestingly, it got there without a lot of help - but a lot of hype - from Wal-Mart.
AMR's John Fontanella, in this report on RFID Update says that the lack of the true Wal-Mart injection that everybody expected actually forced vendors to explore other uses fror the technology, which meant going into enterprises and solving real business solutions. I think that's an interesting view, and it may well turn out to be correct.
On the other hand, as with any 'new' application of technology, larger questions remain. We still haven't solved the privacy issue that I've covered here recently. Now, security's back on the agenda, after InformationWeek in the US reported this RFID crypto story. I'm minded to think that these security questions will always keep coming along for RFID. The story, "RFID tags hacked", is one that many people want to be able to prove and with the technology taking off in a range of applications, it is true that security will continue be an issue.
There is a fine balance between raising these sorts of issues (which need to be addressed), and hyping them. I think the balance is probably about right on privacy now in that questions have been raised, and the RFID industry and business are going about solving them, without making too much of a palaver. Let's hope any security issues can be tackled in a similar collaborative fashion.
Technorati tags: security privacy AMR Wal-Mart InformationWeek hacked