RFID market to top $11bn in 2017

IDTechEx’s RFID Forecasts, Players and Opportunities 2017-2027 report has the total RFID market at 11.2 billion USD this year, up from 10.52 billion USD in 2016 and 9.95 billion USD in 2015. This figure includes tags, readers, software and services for RFID labels, cards, fobs and other form factors, for passive and active RFID.

In retail, RFID continues to be rolled out for apparel tagging predominately, an application alone that will demand 8.7 Billion RFID labels in 2017, according to the report. And there is still plenty of room for growth with less than 20 percent penetration of the total addressable market for apparel in 2017. In other areas, RFID in the form of tickets used for transit will demand 825 million tags in 2017 and the tagging of animals continues to be a legal requirement in many more territories, with 480 million tags being used for this sector in 2017.

In total, IDTechEx expects that 18.2 billion tags will be sold in 2017 versus 15.2 billion in 2016. Most of that growth is from passive UHF (RAIN) RFID labels. However, in 2017 UHF RFID tag sales by value will be 25 percent of the value of HF tag sales, mainly because HF tags where used for security have a higher price point versus the cheaper, usually disposable labels used for tagging things.

IDTechEx is a market research and business intelligence organization, and has analyzed the RFID market for more than 18 years.

L&L and industry supplier Avery Dennison are co-hosting a series of webinars addressing the RFID market, and you can listen again to the first webinar, ‘RFID Basics’, here. The second webinar, ‘The RFID market – why it represents an enormous opportunity’, takes place on September 12, with more details available here