Report: RFID - A Tale of Four Continents

01/01/2007

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. - Reporting on the usage and volume of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, IDTechEx’s “RFID - A Tale of Four Continents,” examines data from North America, East Asia, Europe, and Australasia. IDTechEx found North America to be the largest RFID market in value, tag volume, and case studies, with the U.S. being the primary driver.

RFID usage in retail and consumer applications occurs mostly in North America, while East Asia and Europe primarily use RFID for financial, security, and safety end-products. Australasia applies the most RFID in library/archiving applications.

The report also found that high-frequency (HF) tags suit high-volume applications, though ultra-high-frequency (UHF) tags are used for air baggage, pallet-tracking, and related applications. Low frequency (LF) no longer figures into the global RFID usage. In the U.S., UHF is most used; the rest of world (ROW) prefers HF. IDTechEx noted that the standard frequency for the potentially major sector of drug packaging, HF or UHF, has yet to be determined.