Global RFID market on steep growth path as IoT booms

Market news | October 19, 2016

By Rich Pell

At present, the global RFID industry is mainly concentrated in European and American markets, where RFID technology has more mature applications, accounting for nearly 70% of the global total in 2015.

In contrast, China is at the stage of RFID exploration and has no mature standards and technologies, thus leading to lower market penetration. In future, with improvements in RFID standards, technical breakthroughs, lower tag costs, as well as the advancement of smart IoT industry, the Chinese RFID market is expected to grow at an annual rate of around 20% in 2016-2020.

In terms of RFID tags, China has become the world’s largest production base, representing roughly over 70% of the world’s total. In 2015, China’s RFID market size approached RMB3 billion, 90% of which came from passive RFID.

Comparatively, however, active RFID boasts long-distance identification, big data transmission, low transmitting power, and excellent reliability and compatibility, among others. As a result, starting in 2004, the active RFID market showed rapid growth, and a large number of enterprises such as Shanghai Super Ele&Tec, ZTE Intelligent IOT Technology, and Shenzhen Aerospace Innotech have already entered the market.

From the perspective of applications, RFID technology in China has been applied to a broad range of fields from railway vehicle number identification, ID card and ticket management, animal identification, book management, to public transportation and production process management.

But in logistics, clothing, medical care, food and other fields, it is still in its infancy, which results from the following four reasons: first, higher costs; second, delay in establishment of national standards; next, high costs in infrastructure replacement; last, low technical level. In the future, RFID technology is expected to enjoy unprecedented development in food safety tracking, smart transportation, intelligent manufacturing, and clothing retailing in the wake of transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.