RFID Sourcebook

6.5. RFID Will Replace Bar Codes Soon

The short advice is this: “Forget it.” Read on to understand why. For RFID to “replace bar codes soon,” it must overcome the following hurdles “soon”:

• Tag any item that a bar code can tag today. Such items include almost every type of physical merchandise in existence in the world economy. To do this at an acceptable cost, the following four hurdles must be overcome:

  - Cheap hardware with tags costing less than 5¢. The profit margin of some of industries is razor thin and prone to cutthroat competition. Any extra cost that does not go toward the bottom line is rarely justified.

  - No consumer issues. The consumer must accept the use of RFID to tag every item that bar codes can today.

  - Technical advancement ...