UHF RFID Technologies for Identification and Traceability

4

RFID Markets

Which business problems can RFID technology resolve? This is this key question that this chapter will try to answer

4.1. Introduction

The Internet of things (IoT) is emerging, and it will create a smarter world with objects connected to their environments and also to all of us.

There will come a day when a massive network of small intelligent devices will be aware of our needs and work for our actual benefit.

A number of technologies will enable IoT to be deployed widely, and the item-level RFID is a key technology that has already conquered a few applications.

To date, RFID has been used mainly for business-to-business (B2B) applications, but business-to-consumer (B2C) applications have started emerging with near-field communicating (NFC) already turning hundreds of millions of mobile phones into RFID readers.

The tipping point for RFID wide deployment is that consumers are using the technology for their own benefits.

4.2. Market inflection point: users

Although history never repeats itself the same way, it is possible to highlight some analogies between mobile phone, Internet and RFID.

In the early 1970s, the first e-mail was sent and the first handheld mobile phones appeared.

From there, it took 25 years to build a reliable infrastructure and another 5 years to build user-friendly tools. Also, when users start experiencing the importance of the technology to make their life simpler, this is the inflection point for fast technology deployment.

Figure 4.1.

RFID ...